From the October 2015 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine

 
While the Joint Commission has no specific requirement for dose tracking software, as there is for the MITA Smart Dose Standard, meeting the new Joint Commission requirements will be difficult for facilities with any appreciable patient volume without any kind of dose management software, says Brent Christenson, senior field marketing manager for Philips, which launched its DoseWise Portal at last year’s RSNA (the company previously had a marketing partnership with Radimetrics). “Can someone do Joint Commission without buying something?” Christenson says. “Yes, but you’re going to do a lot of work.”
 
At this year’s ISCT, Toshiba introduced new software called CT Vitality that allows providers to manage the CT protocols among multiple Toshiba scanners. “If you have to manually make protocol changes on each CT scanner, that’s fraught with error,” says Tim Nicholson, senior manager of market development for CT at Toshiba America Medical Systems.
 

Getting ‘smart’
The new Joint Commission requirements work hand in hand with XR-29, or the MITA Smart Dose Standard. Under the law, which takes effect at the beginning of next year, hospitals and doctor’s offices that perform diagnostic CT scans in an outpatient setting and don’t use equipment that meets the Smart Dose Standard will have their Medicare reimbursements cut by 5 percent in 2016 and 15 percent by 2017.
 
Compliant equipment must have four key attributes: A DICOM Radiation Dose Structured Report that enables dose information to be captured in a standardized electronic format and included in the patient record; CT Dose Check, which alerts technicians before they start a scan if the estimated dose will be higher than the parameters the facility has defined; automatic exposure control, which tailors the radiation dose to the specific body regions and parts being imaged in order to manage the radiation delivered to obtain the desired level of diagnostic quality; and pediatric and adult reference protocols.
 
The main CT manufacturers, including Siemens, GE, Philips and Toshiba, have created portals on their Web sites to allow customers to check the status of their scanners and obtain certificates of compliance, which the manufacturers are legally required to provide.
 
While some critics have said that the MITA Smart Dose Standard was a way to facilitate the purchase of new CT scanners, Schmalzing, of Siemens, says it’s a good opportunity for a facility to look at its fleet and see what makes sense to upgrade. The company also doesn’t push its customers to purchase a new system if they can upgrade it. If a facility has a service contract with Siemens, the upgrade is done at no cost. “I think we all agree that we think this is going in the right direction,” Schmalzing says. “The legislation itself has patient care and outcomes in mind.”

October 2015 Magazine

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