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Medford Group Ups Productivity Ante with PAS/RIS/VR Integration
By Julie Ritzer Ross
 As the largest radiology practice in a 150-mile radius, Medford Radiological Group (MRG), PC, in Oregon enjoys significant demand for its imaging services from referrers near and far. Michael Troychak, MD, MRG’s president, says that satisfying such demand and (most important) providing the caliber of patient care that fosters growth necessitate a degree of productivity bolstered heavily by a tightly integrated, technology-based radiologist-productivity platform.
MRG currently has 20 radiologists, with one more slated to come aboard shortly and another arriving in July 2012. Its wide swath of coverage encompasses 26 sites—22 outpatient facilities and four nonprofit hospitals—spread across a 200-mile span.
Most interpretations are executed remotely, with on-site visits scheduled where necessary; for example, one radiologist travels weekly to a very distant site on the Oregon coast to perform mammography and certain other procedures. The group itself uses just one teleradiology provider (and only between midnight and 7 am).
Factors other than geography also render maximum radiologist productivity an imperative for the practice. “Of course, there is the issue of declining reimbursements, which is something all physicians face and about which we are always hearing warnings and predictions,” Troychak says.
He continues, “Even more significant is that over the past five years, we have increased our practice size and scope, doubling the number of sites we cover and adding four radiologists. At the same time, demand for specialty interpretations is on the rise as neurosurgeons, orthopedists, and other physicians become increasingly familiar with imaging; we, in turn, must become more sophisticated in our interpretations.”
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ARA’s Box Workflow Redefines the Practice-productivity Platform
By Matt Skoufalos
 When one of two largest hospital groups in the Austin, Texas, area decided to implement PACS, CIO R. Todd Thomas of the Austin Radiological Association (ARA) had some choices to make for his night coverage. Although ARA had mostly blanketed the area with Synapse PACS (FUJIFILM Medical Systems USA, Stamford Connecticut), to which many of its radiologists were accustomed exclusively, the new platform from a different provider would account for 40% of the group’s night and emergency/off-hours interpretations.
Moreover, ARA radiologists were already juggling an influx of fax-transmitted patient information, paper requisitions, an in-house instant-messaging client, and several cross-platform dictation modules. Instead of bemoaning the longstanding interactivity concerns that complicated his life, Thomas saw an opportunity to rethink the entire off-hours ARA reading system.
“It’s strictly there for when our clinics close down and all the hospitals send their cases in for nighttime interpretations,” Thomas says. “During the day, we have radiologists staffed in the hospitals, and they’re either reading off the other PACS or Synapse.”
 Thomas tasked Jason Wilson, software engineering manager, with making the new apparatus sing. Together with ARA radiologist Michael Gunlock, MD, who has an interest in software development, the duo (and team members Joseph Garro and Scot Pfuntner) set out to contrive a new interface, workflow, and application to solve the problem. They named their new solution Box Workflow.
“The first challenge that we had was to make it as simple for the radiologist as possible,” Thomas says. “The existing software was based on a very paper-driven requisition system; any manual system like that is prone to errors.”
Under Box Workflow, exams now enter the system through an automatic data-mining process that Thomas and Wilson refer to as the control cockpit. “Since we’ve got control of the data from the beginning to the end, we know exactly where the data came from,” Wilson explains.
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Riverside Radiology: Growing the Practice with Imaging Informatics
By David Rosenfeld
 When Riverside Radiology and Interventional Associates (Columbus, Ohio), one of the largest radiology practices in the United States, went to PACS vendor FUJIFILM Medical Systems USA (Stamford, Connecticut) to make some custom changes to its Synapse platform, Fuji representatives were all ears.
Jim Morgan, vice president of medical informatics for Fuji, says, “As vendors, we’re trying to reach a mass group of diverse customers. It’s always a challenge to balance everyone’s needs. For any vendor to be successful, it has to be able to make changes that are unique for an individual customer. As Riverside Radiology has demonstrated, it has made a number of unique enhancements to our products and capabilities.”
 Morgan made his comments during a webinar called Developing a Comprehensive IT Strategy for the Practice. The webinar featured leaders from Riverside Radiology, exemplary in its leverage of IT to improve workflow and patient care and to enable the practice to grow. The speaker panel included Mark Alfonso, MD, practice president; Marcia Flaherty, CEO; and Ron Hosenfeld, CIO.
The practice, which has grown from 17 radiologists in 1999 to 70 today, covers 17 hospitals and 27 outpatient centers throughout Ohio. Last year, Riverside Radiology was ranked as the 11th largest radiology practice in the country, according to the annual survey1 conducted by Radiology Business Journal and CliftonLarsonAllen (Minneapolis, Minnesota).
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Is Your Help Desk Helping?
Most corporate help desks are outdated, according to a Gartner analyst. An article in Computerworld describes how some large organizations have optimized help-desk operations (with an assist from technology) to turn trouble into a teaching moment.
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Worldwide PACS Market to Hit $5.8 Billion in 2017
The worldwide market for PACS is expected to grow by 10% annually, to about $5.8 billion by 2017, according to MarketResearch.com.
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Perceptual Trick Improves Mammogram Accuracy
Researchers at Washington University used a perceptual trick called subtle gaze direction to improve the accuracy of mammogram interpretations among novices. The technique exploits the difference between peripheral and central (foveal) vision.
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With EHR Adoption at 56%, Data Breaches Soar
An unintended consequence of the adoption of health IT is a surge in data breaches, up 32% in 2011, costing the health-care industry an estimated $6.5 billion last year.
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HIMSS 12 Annual Conference and Exhibit
Sponsored by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society
February 20–24, 2012
Venetian Sands Expo Center
Las Vegas, Nevada
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SIIM Regional Meeting: Best Practices, Solutions, and Networking
Sponsored by the Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine
March 22
Long Beach, California
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SIIM 2012 Annual Meeting
Sponsored by the Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine
June 7–10, 2012
Orlando, Florida
Register >>
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