Chesapeake Bay Area Hospital Cuts Film-based Operational Costs by 90 Percent
Rappahannock General Hospital (Kilmarnock, VA) has selected Viztek, the Jacksonville-based state-of-the-art digital solutions company, to provide its Opal-RAD PACS to facilitate complete filmless radiology workflow at the 76-bed rural acute care facility.
“Our goal was to reduce operational costs in radiology through a filmless conversion. Viztek was the only vendor that could accomplish this, thanks in part to its affordable price point,” explains Randy Hester, senior vice president and CEO for Rappahannock Hospital. “We looked at a full range of PACS solutions, and Viztek Opal-RAD delivered comparable, or more sophisticated features, than other system at considerably less cost.”
Along with implementation of the PACS, the hospital made almost a complete transition to filmless by installing two Viztek supplied CR units. Today, the hospital’s full range of modalities, from MR and CT to nuclear medicine and x-ray, are fully digital. Only mammography remains hardcopy.
During the month following the Viztek installation, the hospital cut film usage by 90 percent, saving significant funds. Hester reports that the Viztek Opal-RAD PACS is so simple to use that radiologists immediately accepted the technology and had a minimal learning curve.
“All the large vendors warned us that some radiologists would be resistant to the
digital transition,” says Hester. “What’s more, they predicted most surgeons and other referring physicians would cling to film.”
But not so, according to Hester. He notes that not only did imaging specialists embrace the digital environment but surgeons drove an additional PACS conversion in the operating room (OR). “Shortly after installing Opal-RAD, we went ahead and put in three additional digital workstations in our ORs. After seeing the results in radiology, the surgeons really wanted this.”
The Viztek PACS provides a full range of advanced features, from single database, Web-based report distribution to customizable worklists and hanging protocols.
Radiologists particularly appreciate the ability to dictate directly into the PACS and to access dictation files anywhere over the Internet as soon as they are stored. “Viztek’s dictation is a unique and valuable feature,” said Hester. “Our radiologists find it extremely efficient and convenient.”
Rappahannock’s PACS includes onsite storage for three years worth of images, onsite duplication of stored images for business continuity as well as remote image back-up at Viztek’s Jacksonville digital storage facility.
Installation was completed in two days and radiologists began using it the week it was installed. “Viztek staff was helpful and extremely knowledgeable. They went out of their way to deliver top level service,” said Hester.
About Viztek
Founded in 1999, Viztek, Inc. is a leading software development company and a value-added reseller of computed radiography (CR) scanners and related hardware, serving the orthopaedic, imaging center, small hospital and chiropractic markets.
Viztek’s software is designed to help both the management of all of the digital data of a medical practice, including patient imaging and medical records, as well as process this vast imaging data through various internal and external data networks.
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- Viztek Opal-EHR Receives Complete Ambulatory Meaningful Use Certification - November 12, 2012
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