MAY 2016CIOAPPLICATIONS.COM 19Better Patient Care for Better Outcomes:For radiology, advanced workflow management typically refers to the work managed by a RIS (Radiology Information System), which stores, manipulates, and distributes patient imaging data for scheduling, tracking, and reporting.In short, a RIS defines the behavior by which radiology practices and imaging departments handle studies to optimize clinical outcomes. For vRad, workflow management is driven by a patented assignment algorithm that optimizes imaging study distribution, based on key factors such as physician licensing and credentialing status, worklist depth, subspecialty expertise, ordering physician preferences and study type. Workflow management is all geared towards getting the right study to the right physician in the shortest period of time­typically under a 30 minute turnaround time for a standard emergent patient study. The workflow management landscape for radiology has become increasingly complex, driven by heightened client expectations ­and the scalability challenges coming from volume growth; our 400+ physicians will read nearly 7,000,000 imaging studies this year. That means, in a typical 24 Shannon Werb, CIO & COO, vRad (Virtual Radiologic)CIOInsightsIntelligent and Insight-driven Workf lowshour period, our workflows will optimize the distribution of over 20,000 cases, including non-emergent X-Rays to emergent full body scans for trauma patients. For example, while an acceptable turnaround time for a non-emergent X-ray may be 12 to 24 hours, a trauma study must be read much more quickly and should be read within subspecialty to impact clinical outcomes. With hospitals and health systems increasingly measured on value vs. volume, improved patient outcomes depend on improved clinical workflows.For example, vRad's patented Trauma Protocol workflow automatically "unbundles" trauma cases, assigning each body region (Neuro, Body, Upper or Lower Extremities) to the appropriate sub-specialized radiologist to be read concurrently. The workflow escalates trauma cases to the top of the radiologists' worklists with a requirement to be read next. The workflow also includes notifying radiologists which of their colleagues are reading the other body regions for the same patient, enabling real-time collaboration at the point of care. The radiology reports for each body region are sent to the facility as soon as they are completed, allowing treatment to begin as quickly as possible. This complex workflow delivers an average turnaround time of under 12 minutes vs. a complete trauma study possibly taking upwards of 45 minutes when only one physician is involved. Better efficiency and optimized use of subspecialty physicians means better patient care with better patient outcomes.In addition to clinical workflows, a large number of operational workflows is also considered crucial to maximize practice efficiency and assist in the delivery of patient care. These include critical findings workflows, i.e. when a radiologist must speak directly with a referring physician to indicate positive findings, requests for prior reports or images, follow up on incomplete reports prior to study distribution, etc. Relying on both automated and manual workflows, the administrative burden on both physicians and client personnel is further minimized with our 24/7 Operations Center. Imaging workflows are being disrupted by the move from manual, to automated and "intelligent," "insight-driven" technologies, as well as the requirement for increasingly integrated systems to drive more efficient delivery of imaging solutions. Most radiology practices have multiple imaging systems­at best, loosely integrated­such as PACS, RIS, reporting systems, phone systems, voice recognition, etc. Integrating these disparate technologies and their associated workflows
< Page 9 | Page 11 >