Midwest Orthopaedics at Rush Relies on Aspyra's AccessMED PACS to Treat the Pros

Challenge

Being a high-volume clinic where it's not uncommon for an individual joint reconstruction surgeon to perform more than 500 joint replacements per year, Chicago-based Midwest Orthopaedics at Rush (MOR) continually seeks ways to increase the efficiency of its physicians and staff.

Solution

MOR selected the AccessMED™ specialty PACS (picture archive and communications systems) solution from Aspyra, which provided a significant improvement in clinical and operational efficiency.

Results

MOR has experienced a 30% increase in clinical and operational efficiency, and images are available for viewing at multiple locations simultaneously - reducing transit time and lost film.

Midwest Orthopaedics at Rush (MOR) is an orthopedic group practice with 30 physicians and more than 70 other clinicians providing subspecialized orthopedic services at four primary clinic locations and a centralized administrative office. MOR and its physicians are nationally recognized in their subspecialties, as evidenced by the US News and World Report ranking of the orthopedic program at Rush as eighth in the nation and the top-ranked program in Illinois.

MOR has installed AccessMED at the organization's four clinical facilities, with the system's data archive housed at the administrative facility. Clinicians access the images via diagnostic-quality workstations that are located near the exam rooms, and via browser-based clinical viewing stations that are located in each exam room.

“We expect the increased efficiency that the system provides us to deliver a complete payback on our technology investment within two years,&148; said Dennis Viellieu, CEO of MOR. “Image acquisition is the biggest time savings, followed by the reduced time spent filing and retrieving film. In general, our physicians are able to get the information they need quicker, so they can see more patients, which increases our revenue stream.&148;

Additional benefits that MOR has realized include the ability for multiple locations to access an image simultaneously via AccessMED, vs. using film where only one person/facility could be using the hard copy film at any one time. This is particularly important for MOR, since many of its physicians participate in research at Rush University Medical Center where images need to be viewed by multiple people.

“One of the biggest factors influencing our decision to select the Aspyra PACS was that the solution was highly scalable using our existing hardware infrastructure,&148; said Chad Swartz, PACS administrator at MOR. “Aspyra has designed its systems to have numerous options that can be configured by the customer, which appealed to us because we didn't want to feel tied to the vendor whenever we needed to make a change to the system.&148;

Initially, physicians elected to use film and digital images simultaneously to compare quality and act as a backup in case of system failure. But, within four months following implementation, about half of the physicians have chosen to go filmless and rely exclusively on the AccessMED PACS solution. “For our early adopters who were proponents of the PACS technology, the transition from film to digital images was painless,&148; Viellieu said. “For others, it has required a change in mindset. The late adopters are people who need to see that the digital way of handling images is better than the film and manual way. It may take some time until they come to this conclusion, but I'm confident that they will.

“The transition to PCS is an important step for us,&148; he added. “We believe that physicians can improve the practice of medicine with digital images, since it's easier to spot trends and compare historical images. And, Aspyra has helped us with this part of our journey.&148;