The Glacial Ridge Health System, a rural, critical access hospital, has reduced costs by 50 percent by replacing its film-based picture archiving system with an on-demand PACS.
The 19-bed hospital and satellite office in Glenwood, Minn., which serves more than 4,300 residents, upgraded its analog X-ray machines to digital capabilities with two new computed radiography (CR) units. As a part of its digital strategy, hospital officials wanted to move away from film to a picture archiving and communication system (PACS).
GRHS adopted a turnkey PACS system from Minneapolis-based 7 Medical LLC.
7 Medical's PACS offers hospitals and clinics across the nation a way to take advantage of the same technologies traditionally available only to large hospitals with big budgets, according to the company's executives. Its on-demand, or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), business model is designed to remove barriers to entry, such as budget constraints and lack of clinical and technical expertise.
"We were all for PACS and going filmless, but getting there was a challenge," said Jean Mattson, radiology manager of GRHS. "There was so much to consider, and fear of change made us guarded."
"7 Medical delivered a system that achieved our goals and saved us money," Mattson said. "Timing was really tight, and our 7 Medical project manager kept the project moving to ensure on-time completion."
Critical to the project, Mattson said, was integration of the PACS to the existing Healthland HIS, further automating orders and workflow and increasing efficiency. "The ability to send orders electronically and have them populated in the work list at the modality significantly cut down on data entry errors," she said.
Filmless since April 2008, the on-demand PACS at GRHS supports six modalities: two CRs, CT, ultrasound and mobile MRI and nuclear medicine. More than 75 doctors, nurses, referring physicians and staff use the PACS and Web viewer.
"Radiology reports are turned around quicker than we ever imagined. Our doctors and referring physicians like using the Web viewer to view images and reports online," said Mattson.
"Patients like being able to see their images immediately after they're taken, especially in the ER," said D. Eric Westberg, MD. "We can show patients their images in the exam room, and they can take images on CD with them to referring physicians. Very impressive."
