From the November 2015 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
• Identify and describe all of the imaging and information systems, their components, and their interdependencies.
• Identify and describe all of the known “burning bushes” including performance issues, impending system upgrades, end-of-life notices, expansion plans, physician complaints/dissatisfaction, etc.
• The physician input. The smaller, more nimble, working groups should focus on investigating current technology options across the broad spectrum of solutions that have anything to do with imaging and data management systems. There are three approaches to this task: Internet research; sitting through vendor presentations; and outside expertise.
A working group will also have to collect enough specifics about the organization’s current imaging operations to enable a few selected vendors to create a budgetary quote. A key component of the enterprise imaging strategic plan is the deployment schedule, and it would be nearly impossible to design a deployment strategy without knowing the total cost of ownership of the various components of the enterprise system. The last few educational sessions should be focused on achieving consensus on the strategic plan by presenting the following for discussion:
• The technology options.
• The budgetary (cost) considerations.
• IT resource requirements and availability.
• Recommendations. The final high-level meeting, the one in which the final strategic plan is decided upon, should be attended by key physician representatives, as no strategic plan can be successful without their buy-in.
The following is a summary of the subjects, issues, and areas that need to be carefully considered in the process of developing the enterprise imaging strategic plan. My list is not the suggested order of importance, as that is the subject of the discussion sessions.
• Current and future state of the existing department PACS. What are the upgrade and replacement schedules?
• How to provide PACS functionality to imaging departments currently without a PACS (i.e. endoscopy). Will these departments share an existing PACS (i.e. radiology), or utilize the functions of a VNA combined with a standalone viewer?
• Image-enabling the EMR with both DICOM and non-DICOM images. Will this involve multiple PACS-based viewers or a single universal viewer? Does the organization appreciate the subtle variances in the underlying viewer technologies? When and how does the organization expect this viewer to handle non-DICOM imaging studies?
