Renowned Children’s Hospital is 30th Site in the Kansas City and Surrounding Area where SeeMyRadiology.com Evolves into the De Facto HIE Platform for Imaging
ATLANTA — (November 22nd, 2011) SeeMyRadiology.com (http://www.seemyradiology.com) announces its 30th direct installation in the Kansas City and surrounding area at Children’s Mercy Hospital & Clinics (CMHC), ranked by U.S. News & World Report as one of the nation's top pediatric medical centers. The hospital will utilize the SeeMyRadiology.com cloud-based platform for the communication of images beyond the enterprise, including both sending and receiving images from surrounding community hospitals, imaging centers and physician practices. With SeeMyRadiology.com’s single, comprehensive web portal, sending facilities—wherever located—can upload images and enable Internet-based access in full diagnostic quality for referring physicians, consulting radiologists, patients and other authorized users anywhere.
According to Willie Tillery, CEO of SeeMyRadiology.com, “The Kansas City area is one example where usage of SeeMyRadiology.com has grown exponentially during the past 12 months so that the platform has effectively become a Health Information Exchange for imaging in the region. As more facilities begin to take advantage of the service, SeeMyRadiology.com is quickly becoming the de facto standard for image sharing, encouraging more and more sites to join the network.”
Counting both direct subscriber hub sites and secondary spoke sites that use the free application for image sharing on-the-fly, SeeMyRadiology.com boasts more than 30 imaging facilities in the Kansas City area, among them such major facilities as The University of Kansas Hospital and Saint Luke's Health System.
SeeMyRadiology.com provides an easy-to-manage, cost-effective alternative to image sharing using CDs and hard copy films. Remote users upload images directly from their PACS archive to the destination hospital’s SeeMyRadiology.com Internet portal. The solution requires no software download at the recipient’s site and offers an easy-to-use social media-like interface with a full range of communications options for image viewing and collaboration. It provides advanced security and permissions to ensure full HIPAA compliance for all image sharing.
“As the major children’s hospital in a large geographic area, our hospital receives more than 400 CDs a month from outside locations,” says Joe Racela, CIIP, PMP, Radiology Informatics project manager for CMHC. “Importing these images is a significant task—but extremely important to avoid exam re-takes that mean additional radiation for children.”
Racela notes that originally CMHC had used SeeMyRadiology.com to share its own images with The University of Kansas Hospital which is a longtime subscriber to the service.
Immediately, CMHC saw a great value in the service and also became a hub site. “Today, we have about 21 smaller hospitals and physicians offices—spoke sites—of our own,” he adds. “The system works extremely well. We are very pleased with the benefits, which are growing as an increasing number of local medical facilities are using the system.”
CMHC relies on the SeeMyRadiology.com platform for a range of use cases. These include new patient referrals, trauma transfers and consults with other hospitals. When an exam enters the facility through SeeMyRadiology.com, it is immediately sent to storage in the PACS and to a special SeeMyRadiology.com folder so that the physicians involved know it has arrived. The image can then be immediately recalled and viewed online or via mobile devices, such as the iPads® or iPhones®.
For trauma transfers, physicians can access an exam before the patient arrives onsite, plan the procedure and even prep the OR—rather than waiting for the patient to arrive with images on a CD. For referral patients, the platform also has numerous advantages. “When a patient has an imaging exam done at another facility, about 30 percent of the time we are not able to access it, whether because the format is incompatible or patients simply fail to bring it with them. Now, in these situations, we can look to SeeMyRadiology.com to find out where the last exam was done,” says Racela. “Using the platform, we also can contact the site and request the patient data. Exams arrive in real time, avoiding unnecessary treatment delays and exam retakes. Both patient care and hospital workflow benefit.”
CMHC uses the system to access not only recent priors but also a patient’s exam history if needed. “It works extremely well,” he says. “It really makes a difference in efficiency and quality of care. With such a large number of medical facilities in the area on SeeMyRadiology.com, it is almost like having our own health information exchange, but at significantly less cost than a formal system.”
Heartland Health, a community hospital in nearby St. Joseph, MO, is a spoke site using SeeMyRadiology.com to connect with eight facilities and three sub-facilities. It sends numerous cases to CMHC for trauma and specialized care. “Prior to SeeMyRadiology.com, we used to share images on CD. But in the digital age, we knew there had to be a better way,” says Dr. Joe Boyce, MD, CIO, CMIO for Heartland.
After conducting a survey of the marketplace, Dr. Boyce was convinced that the better way was SeeMyRadiology.com, and he presented the solution to Heartland Health, asking them to become a hub site to help referring hospitals streamline exam sharing. “Now, when we want images to reach remote sites, we can simply upload them to the cloud, and they’re en route,” he says, noting that the impact of this has been fewer repeat exams and enhanced clinical care.
According to Dr. Boyce, in trauma transfer cases, SeeMyRadiology.com often means that sites will not “…waste the golden hour, when every second counts in delivering timely, appropriate treatment for critical care patients. When these hospitals can begin treatment planning before the patient arrives with their images on CD, surgeries begin sooner and outcomes are improved.”
About SeeMyRadiology.com
SeeMyRadiology.com is an online community for medical image exchange that is revolutionizing how imaging facilities, physicians, and patients store, share, and access medical images and reports through a single, comprehensive web portal. By applying the advantages of cloud computing, SeeMyRadiology.com allows for easier and more efficient collaboration and communication between health care facilities, caregivers and patients. Members of the SeeMyRadiology.com community have immediate access to full diagnostic quality images via the Internet in a HIPAA-compliant and secure environment, dramatically improving the speed, mobility, efficiency and quality of care while reducing the cost of medical image exchange.
SeeMyRadiology.com is in use by leading institutions including Kaiser Permanente, Ohio State University Medical Center, Orlando Health, University of Kansas Hospital and University of Utah Health Care among others. Learn more at www.seemyradiology.com
Media Contact:
Kaci Cook
SeeMyRadiology.com
404-575-4222
ncook@seemyradiology.com
