Something can always be gained from maturity: experience, knowledge and insight, for example. In the case of a fairly mature business segment such as the integration of radiology information systems (RIS) and hospital information systems (HIS), departments are gaining reliable information, better communication and improved efficiencies. But like the real world, true maturity is a quality of the few, not the many. And while some facilities are excellent integrators, others haven’t yet seen it as a priority. So if your hospital doesn’t have a highly functioning RIS and HIS interface, listen up: There may be no logical reason not to.
For Westchester Medical Center (Valhalla, N.Y.), a 1,000-bed facility whose radiology department performs 180,000 radiological procedures per year, a top priority in linking their RIS to the HIS was to eliminate dual data entry for admissions, discharge and transfers (ADT) — the demographic data — into the RIS.
“When the RIS folks had to enter an order, all they had to do was enter the order piece,” John Breda, RIS and PACS manager says. “They didn’t have to re-register the patient, and it helped us in two ways: [elimination of] dual entry and most of the human errors, [which] are more likely to happen if you’re entering the patient twice.”
The other major consideration was the mobility of patients within the hospital. Patients may go from the intensive care unit to a step-down unit, and the reports have to follow them throughout the facility. It is important for the hospital to know at any time where patients are. “Before the RIS interface, one of the clerks literally was going through the system with the reports every day, and trying to figure out where that patient was at that given time,” Breda says. Now patient location is determined from the RIS. Data is automatically sorted and sent to the floor.
Please refer to the August 2001 issue for the complete story. For information on article reprints, contact Martin St. Denis
