Ochsner Health System
Ochsner Health System was looking for an enterprise imaging partner who could grow with them as quickly as they were growing themselves. As they were expanding to help serve more people in Louisiana, they found themselves migrating data and images two or three times a year.
“We really needed someone who could grow with us, who had flexibility, who had the technical infrastructure to help us,” said Ashley Clary, Vice President of Imaging Service,”. . . so that was Canon Medical for us.”
Watch to hear the full interview from TriMed Media with Clary and learn how Canon Medical is paving the way with Ochsner Health System.
TeleDiag
About TeleDiag
TeleDiag is one of the first open cooperative telemedicine networks, supporting over 100 institutions across France. Created in 2008, TeleDiag was designed around the goal to help private and hospital practitioners be more effective in their roles with remote radiology offerings, including on-call care.
The Challenge
TeleDiag was looking for an enterprise imaging solution to be a centralized network among their connected providers, radiologists and institutions. They were looking for a partner who could handle their volume and growth, with over 350 radiologists and 110 public institutions. TeleDiag was seeing over 250,000 exams per year, with a goal of growing to over 360,000 exams per year within two years.
Why Canon Medical
To ensure their continued success and growth, TeleDiag needed a partner who had an established brand among the radiologist market. TeleDiag selected Canon Medical’s Enterprise Imaging solution for their product recognition, user experience and adaptability. For years, TeleDiag had adopted Vitrea’s web-based Diagnostic Viewer so transitioning to a full suite of Vitrea products was an easy adoption.
Because of the high product familiarity with Canon Medical, TeleDiag was able to roll out tools quickly to newly added institutions as they joined the TeleDiag network. New providers were able to have access to comprehensive tools and operate on the same level as their previous institution’s internal tools.
Full Showcase
View the full TeleDiag showcase at https://www.vitalimages.com/customer-profiles/telediag-video-gallery/.
King Edward VII’s Hospital
King Edward Vll’s Hospital is a prestigious private hospital in London with a long history of providing care to the British royal family. It is the only hospital in the UK where consultants must be invited to practice. Known for its use of state-of-the-art technologies and a highly credentialed medical staff, the Hospital enjoys a reputation as the “foremost private hospital” in London.
The Challenge
King Edward VII’s Hospital had an aging PACS that was performing poorly. The hospital was also challenged to provide uniform access to imaging in all service areas. When an upgrade was proposed by another vendor at high cost with no new functionality, leadership at the Hospital decided to consider other options.
Why Canon Medical?
Having had a positive business relationship with Canon Medical and Canon Medical Systems in the past, King Edward VII’s Hospital launched a tender process to look at alternatives to the current vendor. After careful review, IT, medical and administrative staff all selected Canon Medical.
Read More Implementation “The project went really well. The Canon Medical team are brilliant to work with! It is a pleasure to be involved with a highly motivated, forward-thinking group with a can-do attitude.” -Corey Frazer, Imaging Services Manager, King Edward VII’s Hospital Project tasks completed by Canon Medical: Components: References:
King Edward VII’s Hospital outlined requirements that included a timeline for project completion within three months. The hospital set up a dedicated team of clinical and IT resources to direct the implementation of the Vitrea® Enterprise Imaging solution into their clinical informatics structure. Canon Medical dedicated a team of software engineers and professional services staff to provide environmental set up, configuration and workflow integration.
The Challenge
Fairview’s imaging leaders faced several barriers to accessing actionable information to support their business decisions. Although the reporting module built into their EMR provided some preconfigured strategic reports, the process of getting ad-hoc information to support an immediate decision was long, requiring the submission of service requests to IT and the involvement of specially trained analysts to construct new reports. Often by the time the requested information was provided, the timeframe for making a critical decision had already passed. Compounding the problem, the EMR is not the only source of operations-related information. The RIS (radiology information systems), PACS (picture archiving and communications systems) and imaging modalities themselves also contain valuable data which contribute to the overall picture.
The Solution
Fairview worked with Canon Medical to implement Practice Management to empower the imaging leaders with self-service access to data. As part of this implementation, one year’s worth of historical data was imported into Practice Management to provide users with immediate insights into performance trends. Fairview’s implementation includes four applications: KPI Dashboard, On Demand Reporting, Scanner Utilization and Clinical Report Search.
Read More The Solution Continued… The KPI Dashboard application allows Fairview’s users to create Key Performance Indicator (KPI) dashboards to monitor key metrics upon the opening of the new outpatient facility. Using this tool, they can identify modality resource usage trends and create a quality dashboard for radiology to present to Fairview Quality, Peer Review and Medical Executive Committees. With the Scanner Utilization application, Fairview’s imaging leaders have a visual tool for tactically managing modality throughput at both the organizational as well as the individual department level; this tool identifies underutilized modality resources. Research at Fairview’s UMMC facility is aided by the Clinical Report Search application, which gives physician researchers the ability to easily aggregate similar cases by searching the report repository using keyword search terms. The Success Cost Control As part of the move, Fairview also created Key Performance Indicator (KPI) tools allowing them to measure and manage the transition, supporting proactive decisions moving forward. “The other day we avoided a $50,000 mobile CT contract when a scanner went down and would be out for six weeks. On-the-fly, we were able to look at the volumes and procedure mix being performed on the down scanner and assess that we could leverage availability on in-house equipment to pick up the slack.” The same data (which detailed types of exam by day, resource, etc.) supported an idea to rearrange schedules and use existing equipment to service patients whenever one of Fairview’s CT scanners required an unscheduled repair. Referral Management “Practice Management lets us search by individual provider, by physician group, by sub-specialty, by modality across our health system. This is something we haven’t been able to do in an actionable way before. We can now understand: who’s ordering the most MRIs of the head without contrast? Is there a noticeable difference in the number of orders with and without contrast? What about joint injections? Ultrasound? We can go across the board to look at all our referral patterns. We can aggregate by any provider to any referral location, allowing us to identify proactively where volumes might be leaking out. We can initiate a conversation to discover our key next steps in capturing critical referral business and optimizing patient care.”
Using the On Demand Reporting application, Fairview’s users can track operational trends such as identifying the top ordering providers by site, as well as how many of each procedure they are ordering. Such insights help the organization guide its referring physician outreach program and market its services to the local physician community. The application also allows easy access to modality productivity numbers, allowing identification of appropriate staffing levels at each location by shift.
Efficiency Gains
Implementation of Practice Management led to immediate efficiency gains by removing barriers to accessing data.
While planning for the opening of the new Clinics and Surgery Center, Fairview used Practice Management to analyze resource usage trends which supported plans to optimize the use of consolidated modality resources from many specialty clinics. Practice Management supported Fairview’s volume and procedure planning and also helped analyze required staffing during the new facility’s extended operating hours.
-Matt Henry, VP System Imaging Services, Fairview Health Services
Practice Management is now a key tool for helping Fairview manage exam referrals by guiding provider outreach activities to drive order capture and reduce referral leakage.
-Matt Henry, VP System Imaging Services, Fairview Health Services
Johns Hopkins Medicine
The Challenge
Johns Hopkins Medicine (JHM) was interested in providing a consistent view of patient information across the enterprise and, to this end, is in the process of rolling out a new EMR from Epic, which is live and in use at several JHM facilities. JHM also has been working to provide enterprise access to patient imaging history and to clinicians directly from the EMR system.
JHM had a vision of providing all clinicians with enterprise-wide access to medical images – accessing imaging studies directly through the EMR, discovering and including prior studies regardless of location and allowing side-by-side comparison of these images. Ideally, this would be provided from a single web-based system where clinicians would learn once and then access images through the EMR via their existing laptops, desktops and mobile devices.
Why Canon Medical?
JHM selected and implemented Canon Medical’s enterprise viewer in phase one of the enterprise viewer initiative. Clinicians can view patient images, radiology reports and related documents from within the EMR via secure link. They launch Canon Medical’s enterprise viewer by simply clicking on a link in the EMR and within seconds they are viewing the images and have access to patient prior imaging studies stored within the VNA.
Phase two extended this capability by implementing Canon Medical’s image streaming technology to provide direct access to studies stored in the PACS at Johns Hopkins Suburban Hospital and Sibley Memorial Hospital facilities without requiring data migration, routing or caching.
Read More The Solution The Success Critical success factors in the JHM implementation of Vitrea
JHM selected and implemented Vitrea® Enterprise Viewer in phase one of the enterprise viewer initiative. Clinicians can view patient images, radiology reports and related documents from within the EMR via secure link that integrates with JHM’s single sign-on mechanism eliminating an extra login prompt. They launch Vitrea Enterprise Viewer by simply clicking on a link in the EMR and within seconds they are viewing the images and have access to patient prior imaging studies stored within the VNA. Since its introduction at JHM, clinicians have come to rely on the ability to quickly access patients’ medical imaging, and consequently, Vitrea Enterprise Viewer adoption has increased steadily on a month-by-month basis. Phase two extended this capability by implementing Vitrea Data Stream technology to provide direct access to studies stored in the PACS at Johns Hopkins Suburban Hospital and Sibley Memorial Hospital facilities without requiring data migration, routing, or caching.
Quick access to all studies, regardless of their location within the JHM enterprise, was met with enthusiasm as it resolved a long-standing issue of study access across the enterprise. The combination of Vitrea Enterprise Viewer with Vitrea Data Stream proved to be a solution that addressed the enterprise imaging challenges at JHM. Vitrea Enterprise Viewer provides secure web-based, zero-footprint access to patient imaging, and Vitrea Data Stream extends this access across multiple systems and archives without costly data migration. Ultimately, this solution enables a holistic view of patients’ medical imaging records, thus enhancing clinical decision support and communication.
Enterprise Viewer and Vitrea Data Stream include:
records in the EMR, with an intuitive suite of tools that
provides clinicians with a full patient imaging history.
how many PACS or VNA systems they are stored in, or
where they are located.
security and reliability needs.
Summit Medical Group
The Challenge
When Summit Medical Group decided imaging was a key component in improving healthcare and outcomes, they had to confront a daunting puzzle. Their wide base of practitioners, vast specialties, multiple facilities, dynamic needs and supporting infrastructure were all pieces that had to fit into their vision as they moved forward.
Why Canon Medical?
After they found the PACS viewer did not fit their needs, Summit Medical Group looked into several universal viewer products to solve the problem of expanding imaging outside of radiology, with Canon Medical’s enterprise viewer clearly rising to the top of their list after multiple rounds of review.
Read More Why Canon Medical? Continued.. With Summit Medical Group’s keen understanding of its providers and their most compelling needs, Vitrea View enterprise viewer was the only solution. The ability to provide the right depth of tools, user-centric experience and design, while enabling Summit Medical Group to view almost any image type, from anywhere, on demand, is what sets the Vitrea View solution apart. Purchasing the product was just the first step – having the fastest car in the world is not any good unless you can drive it. Backing Long, poorly managed implementations can degrade the value of your investment from the start. User adoption of a solution is how true ROI is generated. Many vendors struggle with implementation and charge the customers for inadequate training and messaging. For Summit Medical Group, this was not an issue with the Vitrea View product. “Our problem was that our providers were getting frustrated with our clunky PACS viewer. Our current solution for providing images to providers in our enterprise was to push our entire PACS viewer through an image link in our EMR. We were forced to push the entire PACS application through our EMR. This meant the providers were getting all the tools and functionality that is required by the radiologists, but unnecessary for the referring physicians, the bulk of our providers. This slowed our response time and increasingly frustrated our providers as time wore on. We wanted to find a fast, easy to use viewer that provided a small, simple toolset and would allow access to current and previous images, for all of our providers.” References Implementation “When we saw Vitrea View, our first impression was that it looked simple to use. We saw a large main viewing window with image thumbnails across the left side of the screen. There were a few relevant tools. There was a ruler, window contrast/density, zoom, pan and rotate, and a pointer. There was also a clearly defined history button, which launched a compact window that listed the prior exams in chronological order.” “One of our major concerns was that we have over 500 referring providers and training them on the viewer would be a task. Seeing that Vitrea View was designed with ease-of-use as a consideration made our choice easier. We knew that we would be able to provide a fast image viewer to all of our providers spread out across our enterprise. We have over 60 locations and were able to provide training materials and videos through email and our intranet.” “The response has been overwhelmingly positive. We have made some follow-up visits to providers asking for feedback and there have been no complaints about being confused on how to use the viewer. We are excited about the value we are getting from this solution, today and tomorrow.” “This was our best experience with a product implementation, EVER! From planning, to delivery, to post project review, Canon Medical was on point and helped us every step of the way. It was completed on time, on budget and everyone on our implementation team had nothing but praise for the way the solution was implemented. In fact, I just recently listed them as my favorite vendor in the peer60 survey.”
the Vitrea View solution is Canon Medical’ world class maintenance and support organization.
-Richard Gawlowski, PACS Administrator, Summit Medical Group
In the end, the selection and implementation of an enterprise imaging solution impacts the confidence and efficiency of your providers. You want to choose a solution that provides easy access from day one. These concerns, risks and goals led to the development of Vitrea View software. For Summit Medical Group, Vitrea View enterprise viewer proved to be the right product, implementation and investment. It helped solve the challenge of providing the right information to referring physicians and helped increase efficiency and response times.
-Richard Gawlowski, PACS Administrator, Summit Medical Group
-Kathie Vendemia, Associate Director of Imaging, Summit Medical Group
Banner Health
The Challenge
Banner wanted to implement an enterprise solution that would provide access to all of the advanced visualization tools currently available on their Vitrea® Advanced Visualization workstation deployments and from multiple PACS workstations. Their requirements called for access at sites in a variety of geographic locations, without any compromises in functionality or speed.
Why Canon Medical?
Canon Medical provided a multi-modality, vendor-neutral platform that supports a PACS-integrated enterprise deployment for PACS (Fuji), as well as CT and MR (Toshiba, GE, Philips and Siemens). The deployment provides a single user interface and standardization across facilities, which improves user adoption and lowers support costs.
Read More References Implementation “The move to an enterprise model was part of our original vision when we first partnered with Canon Medical approximately eight years ago. The move from thick client to thin client has given us the tools that the physicians and technologists need at any location within Banner. We no longer have to worry about hardware upgrades on our workstations when new versions of software are released. Everyone is using the same version of the software and everyone now has access to all the advanced applications, rather than having licenses unevenly dispersed around the individual facilities.”
Banner Health
Banner Health
Samaritan Medical Center
Banner Boswell Medical Center and Banner Lakes
Imaging Center
Prior to implementing the enterprise solution, Banner Health had 17 standalone VitreaWorkstationsTM and multiple PACS access points dispersed across their IDN. Now, with the centralization of disparate databases and the ability to use Canon Medical’s rich toolsets from anywhere in the enterprise, physician workflows are available through existing PACS and upgrades and support are streamlined.
-Tim O’Dell, Senior Manager, Medical Imaging
Allina Health
The Challenge
In 2011, Allina Health announced that all of its hospitals met the First Stage of Meaningful Use. To continue with their efforts, Allina needed to implement an appropriate technology to be able to attest to Stage Two Meaningful Use for image results, which included providing fast and convenient access to all of the images stored in their various PACS systems.
Why Canon Medical?
Canon Medical’s enterprise viewer integrates seamlessly with Epic, Allina’s electronic medical record system (EMR). It helps to deliver medical images within Allina’s current workflow of reading radiologic reports and meets or exceeds their requirements for ease of use, single sign-on, average time to launch first image and scalability.
Read More Why Canon Medical? Continued.. Vitrea® View, Canon Medical’s universal viewer, integrates seamlessly with Epic, Allina’s electronic medical record system (EMR). Vitrea View helps to deliver medical images within Allina’s current workflow of reading radiologic reports and meets or exceeds their requirements for: References Implementation “Vitrea View provides access to images that is much more convenient than our previous process, which involved logging into a separate viewer and waiting for it to bring up the images. Since access is quicker and because Vitrea View makes it easy to look at images while we are in the EMR, we are absolutely looking at more images and getting greater value from them.”
-EMR Medical Director, Allina
HackensackUMC
The Challenge
HackensackUMC wanted to meet physician demand for better access to radiologic images. They wanted to bring the images to the care teams, when and where they need them, helping to garner more value from investments already made in image acquisition and improving the patient care process.
Why Canon Medical?
To stay ahead of its competitors, HackensackUMC wanted to provide image access across their medical enterprise. Canon Medical’s enterprise viewer provides fast access to DICOM images from any archive on browsers and mobile devices.
Read More References Implementation Components After testing and a pilot phase, go-live was implemented for the entire facility. Education was provided via email announcements, internal messaging and short face-toface sessions. Remote sessions were also offered. After implementation, Vitrea View support was incorporated into HackensackUMC’s standard support processes. “Our partnership with Canon Medical helped us respond to the needs of our physician community. We already had positive experiences with the image quality and ease of use provided by our Vitrea Workstations, and we knew we could partner with Canon Medical to successfully architect a solution to image-enable our EMR.”
HackensackUMC set up a dedicated team of clinical and IT resources to direct the implementation of VitreaView into their clinical informatics structure. Canon Medical dedicated a team of software engineers and professional services staff to provide environmental set up, configuration and workflow integration.
-Jeremy A. Marut, Director of Enterprise Architecture