From the January 2015 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine


A need for everyone
Petersilge believes every clinical system should move toward image sharing across their departments, but there’s not a one-size-fits-all solution. “Having a VNA, I think of it as a center and then all the systems plug into that center. That can work in big facilities. In smaller facilities, it may need to be more centered on the individual systems, primarily PACS.”

A major reason to create this level of access across departments is the increasing demands on physicians’ time. The more intelligently information can be provided, the more efficient the use of the physician’s time. “Take for example, a patient with a diabetic ulcer on their foot. They go to a wound clinic on Wednesday and it’s nicely documented and then on Saturday night, they feel it’s gotten worse, so they head to the ER. The poor ED physician is stuck — unless he has access to the wound image from Wednesday, in which case he can assure the patient it’s gotten better or take definitive action if the wound has gotten worse — both key to better patient care,” said Petersilge.
Parting advice
Petersilge stressed that facilities should realize the VNA is not the cornerstone — the workflow is. The VNA is just the software that supports the workflow. Facilities have to think about how comprehensive they want their strategy to be. It’s about coordinating all the images that come into your environment that are produced elsewhere and that coordination requires knowing where you want to go before you embark on a strategy.

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