THE IMAGING PRACTICE
Patients love the comfort and personalized care they receive when they go to Ultimate Imaging in Hamilton, Bermuda. The boutique-style imaging center has been successfully delivering individualized and high-quality care to its patients since 2007. Four years ago, however, a serious problem began to arise.
THE PROBLEM
Ultimate Imaging’s staff was finding it increasingly difficult to offer their signature personalized care while having to deal with a generic and outdated workflow software which they inherited from the local hospital.
There was a duplication of effort by the administrators and the technologist having to manually type exam orders, patient demographics, and exam findings several times throughout the imaging workflow.
The Solution Needed to be...
USER-FRIENDLY
so that a staff with a wide variety of age and experience levels could learn the software.
FLEXIBLE
so that the solution could be configured to match a unique style of care.
POWERFULLY AUTOMATED
so as to eliminate needless manual data entry and simplify the transmission of data.
Through considerable effort, the imaging team was making it work, and their patients were still happy. If Ultimate Imaging was ever going to be able to help more people, however, they were going to need a new workflow software that was flexible enough to fit their unique style and powerful enough to automate patient registration, order generation, patient scheduling, and the technologist’s workflow. Due to the staff’s wide range of age and experience levels, Ultimate Imaging also needed a very user-friendly workflow solution with a strong customer support team.
The search proved difficult. After sifting through workflow solutions that were either too big and costly, or too small and not powerful enough, Ultimate Imaging found their solution in medQ’s modular imaging workflow.
“Ultimate Imaging’s staff was finding it increasingly difficult to offer their signature personalized care while having to deal with a generic and outdated workflow software…”
THE SOLUTION
medQ is the creator of the Q/ris 3000 Enterprise Imaging Workflow, a collection of 40+ different imaging workflow modules that allows imaging teams to essentially build their own highly tailored solution without paying for heavy customization costs.
A medQ workflow automation consultant and the staff at Ultimate Imaging jointly analyzed their current workflow and technology, comparing them to best practices at the time. Together, the workflow consultant and Ultimate Imaging selected the precise set of modules that would provide the flexibility and power necessary to bring a high level of automation to their workflow without compromising their highly personal approach patient care.
Weeks later, medQ, in partnership with UI’s team, implemented the Q/ris 3000TM Order Entry, Front Desk, and Tech Worklist modules.
- Order Entry™ automatically fills in the exam and patient information from orders sent from the referring physician’s EMR* and makes that data available universally across the entire system.
- Front Desk™ streamlines and automates complex scheduling procedures and provides a quick, paperless patient arrival process.
- Tech Worklist™ auto-populates exam and patient information including the DICOM MWL. It allows technologists to attach e-worksheets to the PACS images and send DICOM structured data, procedural notes and dosage notes directly to the radiology team’s reporting solution.
THE RESULTS
Twelve months after implementation, it was time to measure the results of UI’s newly automated workflow. The medQ solutions proved to be successful at automating administrative and technologist tasks. Today the imaging team at Ultimate Imaging saves 15,600 man-hours every year! The time saved equals a $312,000 savings in employee costs annually.
Due to medQ’s auto-population of important data throughout the workflow and being able to digitally transmit studies, Ultimate Imaging was able to reduce report turnaround time by 75% (from 4 days to same-day reporting).
The optimizations provided by the Front DeskTM and the Tech WorklistTM allowed technologists to perform double the amount procedures in a given day (from 7 ultrasounds and 2 mammograms a day per technologist to 14 ultrasounds and 4 mammograms each day per technologist).
According to UI’s staff, the medQ solutions were just as user-friendly as they needed them to be with new hires being able to become proficient with the medQ imaging workflow modules in a single day.
