SSM Health St. Joseph Hospital is one of the first hospitals in the U.S. to install Carestream’s DRX-Evolution Plus imaging system for its emergency department patients.

“The traditional X-ray room would last 12 to 15 years. For us, we were looking for a higher level of technology in the market, because we would have the machine for many years to come,” Jamie Rapp, the hospital’s team leader for diagnostic imaging, told HCB News.

The hospital’s radiology team installed a wall stand on a rail with a fixed DRX detector. A DRX Plus 3543 detector — that allows images to transition to digital radiography — is used in the table and for tabletop exams.
The angulated wall bucky is on a rail and can travel the length of the exam room. This gives technologists the ability to perform cross-table work with a patient on the X-ray table with the wall bucky next to the table.

“The layout of the room and functionality of the wall bucky is a huge patient safety benefit because you are not moving the patient around as much. The less you move a patient, the less pain you cause the patient,” said Rapp.

This also means less strain on staff members who are required to do less heavy lifting. Additionally, she said, having the wall stand along the rail would expedite cross-table and other complex X-ray exams.

The system has an extended tube column for greater flexibility in high-ceiling rooms and an automated user log-in by scanning RFID badges. There is also the ability for technologists to view images and change techniques on a tube touch screen.

SSM Hospital had previously installed a Carestream Retrofit kit that converts X-ray equipment into a digital radiography (DR) system and a DRX-Revolution mobile X-ray system that has an automatic collapsible column that shrinks the system to just over four feet tall. The software platform is the same for the three systems, and the digital detectors can be interchangeable as well, according to Rapp. If a detector ever becomes defective, the radiology team can switch the detectors out and the device would still be functional.

“Before finalizing our current contract with Carestream, we had looked at different OEM companies and decided that Carestream was our best choice,” she added.

The hospital’s X-ray room is located adjacent to the emergency department, which has more than 42,000 patient visits a year.

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