This column originally appeared in the March 2009 issue of DOTmed Business News, along with a report on PACS, https://www.dotmed.com/news/story/8313.

A PACS application selection, including competitive contract negotiation, can take from six to nine months to complete. In order to reduce the field to two finalists for contract negotiations, the process may involve asking hundreds of questions about the perspective vendor's software and support. Below are just a few of the questions asked by our hospital and health care clients.

Cost: Please provide an estimate of your one-time and ongoing costs for hardware, software, implementation and support.
References: How many facilities of our size do you provide PACS software to nationally? Please identify ALL of your recent installs over the last one to two years (we want to ask them if there is anything they would do differently). Identify sites that have the same data interfaces as we will require at our facility. If we keep our Radiology Information System (RIS), list the sites where our current RIS and your PACS are installed together. If we buy your RIS, list the sites where your PACS and RIS work in conjunction with our Hospital Information System (HIS), and provide comprehensive costs for your RIS. May we have phone numbers and contacts so these references can be checked?

Corporate: Please provide last year's gross revenue for both your PACS division and parent company. We need to understand how important your PACS division is in your overall corporate structure.

What are the locations of your main corporate headquarters and the nearest office that will service our facility?

Resources: How many staff by position will we need to operate your PACS application?

Integration: Since our health system has more than one site, tell us how your system will support our multi-site operation.

Since this is our second PACS application, please tell us where you have successfully migrated data from our old PACS incumbent technology to your system. Or, have you migrated between systems that might present some of the same challenges we can expect to face?

Support: PACS will be a critical application that cannot be down. How is your PACS system designed to cut over immediately to a back up system in case of hardware failure or site disruption?


These are just a few of the many critical questions our clients asked, and got answers for, in evaluating PACS companies. For more information, visit www.HISpros.com.

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