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St Paul Radiology Goes Filmless

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St Paul Radiology Goes Filmless

By Rich Smith

When St. Paul Radiology in St Paul, Minn, initially announced plans to acquire a picture archiving and communications system (PACS), the group’s radiologists, technologists and support staff had concerns. It seemed to them that their enterprise was about to jettison what had been a quite satisfactory -- albeit manual -- system of generating, distributing, interpreting, and storing diagnostic images. They believed they would be retiring this tried-and-true methodology in exchange for a type of technology with which no one was familiar let alone accustomed to using, a move they feared would, at least initially, compromise the efficiency of operations.

Now after 4 years experience, those fears have given way to secure confidence that St. Paul Radiology made the right decision -- both in terms of concept and execution -- with its acquisition of an integrated image and information system from eMed Technologies. The system has been expanded and adapted as St. Paul’s use and understanding of electronic image management has grown.

“Much to its delight, the clinical team discovered rather quickly that we were able to make the radiologists more efficient by virtue of introducing PACS,” says Mary Jo Olson, RT, and Vice President of Operations at St Paul Radiology. “With the use of viewing protocols, the fears proved completely unfounded.”

Adds Rob Rasmussen, MEd, RT, Director of Information Technology, “Since introducing PACS, our statistics have increased by an incredible 62%, without an associated increase in operational costs.”

Olson explains that some of the increased productivity is attributable to the parallel introduction of faster scan technology in certain of the group’s digital modalities. However, the bulk of the gain, she says, stems from the fact that St Paul Radiology’s work processes have -- because of PACS -- been progressing toward an optimized state of affairs.

“The tasks that slow people down are now gone from the work flow,” she says. “For example, it could be time-consuming for technologists to hang film. Now, the time that used to be spent hanging film is devoted to scanning -- a much more productive activity.