CHICAGO, Nov. 30, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN) and the The National Decision Support Company (NDSC) today jointly announced a new integrated set of clinical decision support and collaboration capabilities that utilize the American College of Radiology's (ACR) Imaging 3.0™ tools to enable radiologists and healthcare provider organizations to comply with current and emerging value-based payment models.

By combining clinical decision support, radiology reporting and image sharing technology to open communications channels and provide real-time information sharing between radiologists and ordering physicians, the integrated solutions advance quality initiatives while driving accuracy and efficiency in healthcare. Nuance and NDSC are offering unmatched Imaging 3.0 support to help healthcare providers:

Ensure the most clinically-appropriate imaging exams are ordered for patients;

Enable real-time consults between a subspecialty radiologist using Nuance PowerScribe® 360 and the ordering physician when imaging guidance is needed;
Identify via the PowerShare™ Network when duplicate exams exist and make these available for easy review; and,
Improve the quality of the radiology report by utilizing the latest clinical evidence and follow-up recommendations within PowerScribe 360.
Clinical decision support to physicians ordering imaging exams
By leveraging ACR Select™, nationally-recognized Appropriate Use Criteria (AUC) published by the American College of Radiology and exclusively licensed by NDSC, physicians are guided to order the most clinically-appropriate exam for a patient while working within their native electronic health record (EHR) workflow. ACR Select, which is widely deployed and integrated with major EHRs, is used by physicians nearly one million times per month when seeking clinically-validated imaging guidance when ordering exams. This helps healthcare providers comply with federal law that will require physicians to consult qualified decision support criteria when ordering Medicare outpatient advanced imaging exams.

Radiologists' real-time consultations with ordering physicians
Real-time consultations between ordering physicians and radiologists using Nuance PowerScribe 360 is a key to ensuring the most appropriate exam is ordered, especially in complex cases where ACR Select does not yield a definitive automatic recommendation. In order to support these specialty consultations within both the ordering workflow in the EHR and within the radiologist's reporting workflow, Nuance and NDSC have developed a communications channel between PowerScribe360 and ACR Select.

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