Royal Philips has collaborated with UCHealth, an integrated delivery network of five hospitals in Colorado and more than 100 ambulatory locations across Colorado, Southern Wyoming, and Western Nebraska, to consolidate and standardize UCHealth’s electronic health records, voice recognition systems, and PACS onto specialized platforms for radiology and cardiology. As a result of the migration to Philips IntelliSpace PACS for radiology and Xcelera for cardiology, UCHealth projects a five-year savings of $11.1 million, as well as improved workflow efficiencies, ready access to images for enhanced patient care, and a flexible and nimble structure poised to connect seamlessly with additional technologies.
UCHealth saw rapid growth as part of a merger in 2012 and with it came an array of legacy PACS systems; the new UCHealth system had three radiology PACS and four cardiology PACS. Realizing that IT integration could result in cost-savings, workflow efficiencies and improve patient care, UCHealth is now utilizing Philips to consolidate and standardize its health IT systems across the entire hospital enterprise.
“From a health system perspective, any patient should be able to get identical, high quality, standardized care any place in the system – and PACS is part of that,” said Peter Sachs, associate professor of radiology, University of Colorado School of Medicine, section chief of cardiothoracic imaging and vice chair of informatics, Department of Radiology, and radiology physician informaticist, UCHealth. “Standardizing imaging protocols, workflow, and the structure and content of reports is essential, as is making sure clinicians can see prior studies and historical records.”
“Creating interoperability within health IT is a huge area of focus for us, as it leads to clinical, financial, and operational efficiencies and improvements across the entire healthcare network,” said Jeroen Tas, CEO, Healthcare Informatics Solutions and Services, Philips. “Now radiologists and cardiologists have access to the full patient history contained in the EHR plus clinical tools, and clinicians have the opportunity to review images acquired anywhere within the UCHealth system.”
