Southend Hospital NHS Trust has implemented a new Radiology Information System enabling the hospital to complete three-way integration between the RIS, its Patient Administration System and its Picture Archiving and Communication System.
The trust already had a McKesson TotalCARE PAS in place and wanted to upgrade its RIS to one that would integrate with this system and its new PACS, being deployed at the same time by Agfa, in order to help them deliver a higher level of patient care.
As existing McKesson PAS customers, the trust decided choose the TotalCARE RIS, to make integration more simple and effective. Both the RIS and PACS systems went live last August, providing 1,000 users across the trust with the ability to store, transmit and view images digitally.
Southend’s project manager, Jane Mulreaney, said: “By having a fully integrated radiology, archiving and PAS, Southend is ultimately in a better position to provide more streamlined patient care, whilst achieving greater administrative efficiency.
She added that the McKesson RIS is now providing radiologists with digital dictation, enabling electronic voice files to be stored or used for immediate transcription. "This further integration with the PACS will automate the reporting workflow and therefore speed up this administrative process,” said Mulreaney.
The trust worked with McKesson and Agfa on integrating the systems. McKesson was able to integrate patient information from the PAS and RIS systems it making it easier for staff to see in one got through a single login, eliminating the need for manual cross-matching of records.
Southend’s director of IT, Nick Fernandez, said: “By working with McKesson we have tied the two applications together. A radiologist working within McKesson’s TotalCARE radiology system can now recall an image directly related to a specific patient without having to go out into the PACS archiving system, it’s now done seamlessly from the front-end.”
Agfa and McKesson also spent time working on integrating patient data from the TotalCARE systems with the images being stored in the Agfa PACS system. The integration means that data such as patient demographics and patient records are automatically linked to specific images stored in the PACS system.
Fernandez explained the benefits this provides: “The automation is saving a lot of manual time and increasing the efficiency of our staff by removing any dual data entry – again, ultimately improving patient care.”
Southend’s business systems support and development manager, Alan Tuckwood, said that the integrated systems will provide benefits to its patients.
“Clinicians that need these reports and images urgently for use in A&E for example, can get them out on the wards instantaneously enabling faster diagnoses. Previously reports had to be typed up and couriered around the hospital in an envelope but now with the digitisation and integration, this manual process has become obsolete.”
McKesson’s account executive for the Southend project, Sue Balmford, said: “The work to integrate all three systems was agreed following a joint discussion between the RIS implementation team and the trust. We then spoke with Agfa and agreed to embark on the project to integrate all three systems, which took three months.
She said that benefits of the integrated system now being seen include radiographers being able to digitally send images to Agfa’s PACS system and the automatic sharing of records between the system, "meaning no more individual record numbers for each visit and less re-keying for staff, therefore reducing the clinical risk".
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