Sharp HealthCare (San Diego, California) has undertaken multiple initiatives aimed at implementing organizational and service improvements, as well as enhanced patient care and clinical outcomes. Its latest endeavor is the imminent addition of a PACS that will accommodate non–DICOM images and that, as such, will facilitate enterprise image sharing across specialties, modalities, and facilities (as well as with clinical entities outside its boundaries).

For the vendor-neutral archive (VNA), James M. Conyers says, making the A stand for archive no longer adequately describes the technology’s true capabilities. Conyers, national director of Enterprise Architecture Solutions for FUJIFILM Medical Systems, explains, “It’s more of an architecture than an archive. An archive is just one component of what the VNA actually does.”

In order to improve Lexmark’s Perceptive healthcare content management and workflow solutions and vendor neutral archive (VNA), Lexmark International has acquired leading PACS connectivity platform PACSGEAR for a cash purchase price of approximately $54 million

As accountability in health care becomes an increasingly critical priority, many anticipate a future in which radiologists are employed by hospitals attempting to share risk and align incentives. Accountability can be achieved without employment, however, according to Carl Black, MD, of Utah Radiology Associates (URA), Orem/Provo, a 24-physician practice covering five hospital systems, including the oft-lauded Intermountain Healthcare (Orem). The practice’s relationship with Intermountain Healthcare was the subject of a presentation made by Black on July 28, 2013, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, at the annual meeting of the AHRA

Clinical analytics for radiology practices, in its current form, is defined by nothing so much as its limitations, according to Benjamin Strong, MD, CMO of Virtual Radiologic (vRad). “Practices don’t have the kinds of actionable insights they should, in terms of study characteristics, study mix, referring patterns, workflow, RVUs, and so on,” Strong says. “It’s something with which practices are struggling, if they’re even aware that they don’t have the analytics they need. We were managing blind during the good old days, and that continued for so long that many people don’t even miss analytics.”

On July 16, CMS announced the results1 of its accountable-care organization (ACO) program, the Pioneer ACO Model. The program was designed to test the impact of higher levels of shared savings and risk on ACO success, and it attracted 32 participants from around the country. After the first year of participation, seven Pioneer ACOs that did not produce shared savings announced their intention to transition to the lower-risk (and lower-reward) Medicare Shared Savings Program, while two dropped out of the ACO model entirely.

Disaster recovery is an event that PACS administrators hope that they never will have to confront, but it is increasingly clear that it needs to be a top-of-mind concern. Natural disasters, particularly tornadoes and floods, seem to be occurring more frequently, with greater intensity and with more resulting damage. Hospitals and imaging centers are not exempt from their effects.

With more than 800 active health IT applications to maintain, Bill Russell has no time for distractions. The senior vice president and CIO of St Joseph Health—a nonprofit integrated health-care network that includes 14 hospitals in California and Texas—has a lot on his plate.