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Client Profile: Midwest Orthopaedics at Rush
 Midwest Orthopaedics at Rush Relies on Aspyra's AccessMED PACS to Help Treat the Pros Challenge Being a high-volume clinic where it's not uncommon for an individual joint reconstruction surgeon to perform over 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 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 subspecilized 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. In addition, MOR serves as the team physicians to the World Champion Chicago White Sox and the Chicago Bulls as well as many other professional and amateur sports teams and cultural organizations. MOR installed AccessMED, the Aspyra specialty PACS solution, in August 2005 at two of the organization's four clinical facilities, with the system's data archive housed at the administrative facility. The two additional clinical facilities are planned to go live on the system by mid 2006. Clinicians access the images via nine diagnostic-quality workstations that are located near the exam rooms, and via 50 browser-based clinical viewing stations that are located in each exam room. "The Aspyra PACS installation was a non event, from a CEO perspective," said Dennis Viellieu, CEO of MOR. "The process went smoothly and caused few distractions among our staff." "We expect the increased efficiency that the system provides us to deliver a complete payback on our technology investment within two years," Viellieu added. "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." 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," said Chad Swartz, PACS administrator at MOR. "Other vendors required us to purchase additional hardware to support their systems after we've already made substantial investments in our existing technology. In addition, 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." 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," 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." Despite the success that MOR has achieved with Aspyra's PACS, the clinic learned first hand with another vendor's solution why it's important for a PACS to have features designed for specialty clinics. MOR originally performed a complete installation of another vendor's PACS solution in January 2005, but determined within only a few months that the solution wouldn't meet their needs. "The previous PACS solution just wasn't created to mesh with the workflow of a specialty clinic. It was created for a hospital environment, and was loaded down with features that we not only didn't need, but actually got in our way," Viellieu said. "It was different with Aspyra, which provided a PACS that actually increased our efficiency and was easy to use." MOR recently rolled out Web access to the digital images, which will enable authorized clinicians to access images from any location with a personal computer and an Internet connection. Future efforts include the implementation of additional AccessMED modules, including OrthoView and ImageSTITCH. OrthoView includes templates from virtually every major prosthetics manufacturer to provide clinicians with digital surgical planning capabilities. ImageSTITCH provides the tools needed to combine multiple images into a single image for review, with is especially valuable for long bone and spinal studies. "The transition to PACS is an important step for us. We believe that physicians can improve the practice of medicine with digital images, since it's easier to spot trends and compare historical images," Viellieu said. "And Aspyra has helped us with this part of our journey." More Profiles | Top Copyright © 2006 Aspyra. All rights reserved. Privacy & Legal |
