Case Studies

If you’re going to operate a hospital outpatient imaging facility so distant to the nearest city that your location overlooks a sprawling cow pasture, you need to give patients a reason to make the drive. OGH Imaging in Grand Coteau, LA.—population 939—has been doing just that ever since opening its doors in 2005. 

Six years ago, the non-invasive cardiovascular lab (NICL) at 540-bed St. Dominic Hospital in Jackson, Mississippi, faced something of an uncertain future. The rules for maintaining accreditation, set by intersocietal accreditation commissions, require that all vascular exams get interpreted within 48 hours of image acquisition. For cardiac exams, the read must wait no longer than 24 hours.

2018 has already been a year full of breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, and those technologies are sure to receive a lot of attention March 5-9 at HIMSS 2018 in Las Vegas.

West Feliciana Hospital (WFH) has been serving patients in the small town of St. Francisville, Louisiana, since 1970, but its imaging capabilities were limited for a long time. As a result, the hospital gained a bit of a reputation among referring physicians in the area—when in doubt, they would just avoid WFH altogether and send patients more than 30 miles away to Baton Rouge.

Artificial intelligence (AI) was the center of attention at RSNA 2017 in Chicago, and FUJIFILM Medical Systems U.S.A., Inc. got in on the fun by unveiling its new AI development initiative from its booth at McCormick Place. Bill Lacy, FUJIFILM Medical Systems U.S.A., Inc. vice president of medical informatics, spoke to us after the show about both the history behind the initiative and its bright future.

If you put a leading-edge 3D visualization platform in the hands of a fearlessly tech-forward radiologist, don’t be surprised if some real innovation emerges. That’s one lesson to be drawn from a recent cross-subspecialty adaptation of a Fujifilm Synapse® 3D component called Sector MPR. 

To the surprise of absolutely no one, artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning technologies were the talk of RSNA 2017 in Chicago. More than 70 sessions were devoted to AI, and you couldn’t walk ten feet without reading or hearing the words “machine learning” or “algorithm.” 

Heading into the economically and politically turbulent year that 2018 is sure to be, radiology practices need all the navigational help they can get if they want to not only survive, but thrive in these uncertain times. In-depth assists are available, for free, from vRad for those dealing with staffing shortages, data security concerns, final-read demands and overall practice-performance issues. Here are descriptions and links to online resources that will help practice leaders navigate the course to becoming a high performance radiology practice.

Look to RSNA 2017 for hints on what to prepare for in 2018 and you may take some comfort in the familiar: The profession-wide challenges and opportunities that were common across radiology over the past year aren’t clearing out to make room for entirely new concerns and changes. However, you’ll also need to reckon with the reality of ever-advancing—and in many areas, only accelerating—change.

University of California San Francisco Medical Center has a long history of setting the standards in breast imaging and breast cancer care. Now it’s also setting the standard when it comes to reading and managing digital breast images and facilitating workflow efficiency.

Delivering key images, reports and patient data to the point of diagnosis and care is the Holy Grail of radiology and many other specialties today. Having the correct information for the patient at the right time for the radiologist or referring physician starts with having the right viewer.

As imaging leaders work to help their practices move from volume-based care to value-based care, they often find themselves asking the same key questions. How can I improve workflow? How do I ensure everyone has the information they need? Laurie Bergeron is a product manager for workflow solutions at Change Healthcare who develops solutions that help health systems transition to value-based care. She sat down and answered several questions about this important topic.