by
Sean Ruck, Contributing Editor | June 06, 2013
From the June 2013 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
DMBN: What would be your assessment for someone in the industry for five, six, seven years? How crucial is it for them to get updates?
Geis: I think that it’s going to become increasingly important for any radiology group to almost have a dedicated IT radiologist. It’s easy to put in radiology IT, but to be able to compete in this new environment, you have to have optimized, sophisticated IT tools to streamline the whole imaging process and be able to collect data both on your processes and efficiencies but to be able to collect data to show quality. The most dedicated groups in the country are working on this as hard as they can and their IT is going to be a powerful tool in this competitive environment. If I can make my radiologists just 10% more efficient by just being a great IT radiologist, in a 20 person radiology group, I’ve more than paid my way even if I never read a single X-ray.
DMBN: Has there been a high point to date that really sticks out in your mind during your first year as chair?
Geis: There was a period where radiologists became very interested in PACS and IT, but they put in PACS and voice recognition, and then there was a shift in 2005 where radiologists seemed to think, “We have it all, we don’t need to pay attention to IT anymore,” but just in the last year, I’ve seen more than one radiology group come to us at SIIM and these groups have been working as hard they can reading as many films as they can and they’re asking what they can do and how they work to become more productive.
There’s a new interest that wasn’t there two or three years ago. It’s just starting, but as this intense competition arrives, there’s going to be a huge wave of trying to find IT products to make radiology departments or radiologists more efficient and to maintain high quality while ramping up productivity even more. And the cool thing is, I can look at the IT and if someone comes to me and asks about these products — if they really work, I can say “yes there’s stuff out there and more stuff on the way.” And it’s exciting because we’re only starting to use IT in medical imaging and there’s so much more to do.
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