The Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Québec (CHUQ), which is affiliated with the Réseau Universitaire Intégré de Santé (RUIS) of Université Laval region, is reaping the benefits of a picture archive and communications system implemented months ago.
The hospital is using Belgium-based Agfa HealthCare's IMPAX 6 PACS. As an integral part of the Quebec government's eHealth initiative, IMPAX 6 has helped CHUQ move to a digital radiology environment - improving workflow, facilitating efficient information sharing among physicians and enabling better delivery of patient care, according to CHUQ officials.
In late 2006, Agfa HealthCare was selected as the preferred vendor for the Quebec government's request for proposal to implement a PACS solution across all 51 sites of the RUIS of Université Laval region, which annually perform more than 2.2 million radiology exams.
In addition, dual Diagnostic Imaging repositories (DI-r) were required to centrally manage the storage and sharing of every exam completed in the region. Over an 18-month period, Agfa HealthCare and members of RUIS Université Laval's hospitals and teams rolled out Agfa HealthCare's IMPAX 6 PACS and DI-r solution across the entire region. Six months after the winter 2008 completion, CHUQ is experiencing the full benefits of Agfa HealthCare's technology, CHUQ officials say.
"Prior to the implementation of IMPAX 6, it was extremely difficult for physicians to quickly gain access to previous patient exams, and they would sometimes have to go through laborious search to find the screen films they needed," said Paul Langis, MD, assistant radiological department director at Hôpital Saint-François d'Assise. "With IMPAX 6, physicians can now reduce the number of redundancies, share patient reports in real-time, optimize workflow and call up a digital image quickly, which has provided CHUQ with the opportunity to reduce wait times for exam interpretation."
Before the introduction of PACS, CHUQ was manually sharing patient images between its healthcare institutions. With the implementation of IMPAX 6, CHUQ physicians are now sharing images electronically among its three locations and viewing current and prior exams remotely in real-time. Hôtel-Dieu de Québec, Hôpital Saint-François d'Assise and Centre hospitalier de l'Université Laval (CHUL) are now equipped with more than 900 PACS workstations, and approximately 1,479 healthcare professionals are using the solution and noting faster patient turnaround times and decrease in overall wait times.
"With many healthcare facilities facing the need to work more efficiently and effectively, CHUQ required a solution that would help reduce costs and increase productivity without compromising its high standard of patient care," said Dave Wilson, vice-president, Agfa HealthCare Canada. "With IMPAX 6 in place, CHUQ patients benefit from shorter wait times and faster report turnaround which enables patients to be diagnosed more quickly."
