Nine months after the implementation of Exa PACS from Wayne, N.J.-based Konica Minolta Healthcare Americas, Inc., teleradiology provider Radiology Imaging Solutions, based in Grand Rapids, Mich., one of the state’s largest radiology imaging suppliers, has significantly increased volume and productivity.
Generating a significant return on its healthcare IT investment, the company has doubled the number of imaging sites for which its radiologists are providing reading services. By implementing Exa’s voice recognition in place of traditional transcriptionists, its productivity has also increased by 400%. Radiologists are reading 2.5 times the number of studies with no corresponding increase in working hours and decreasing report turnaround times by more than 50%.
“With Exa, we found a product that delivered more than we had expected in terms of cost-effectiveness and return on our investment,” says Randy Robinson, owner of Radiology Imaging Solutions. “It delivers a top-class software environment with affordable pricing—almost unheard of in our industry—and is a great product, with great people, who stand behind it. With Exa, Konica Minolta not only delivered every bit of what was promised but much more than that with advanced technology, service and support.”
Exa utilizes server-side rendering for fast access to large files, such as 3D mammography, with no prefetching required and a diagnostic-quality zero footprint universal viewer for DICOM and non-DICOM images, including nuclear medicine and echocardiograms. According to Robinson, these technologies have helped reduce overall costs by avoiding the need to purchase dedicated workstations and has led to a reduction in reading times from an average of 4-5 minutes down to 1 minute.
Robinson also believes that the use of Exa’s voice recognition module is also enhancing the quality of the reports and reducing radiologists’ fatigue and stress. Not only are the radiologists more satisfied with their job, they have also indicated they could further increase volume. In 2017, Radiology Imaging Solutions’ radiologists read and reported 35,000 diagnostic imaging studies.
“Once we replaced our old PACS with Exa, our radiologists said they could triple their workload and not be overworked,” Robinson adds. “That’s how much faster, simpler and convenient this solution is over other systems they have used. What might take two to three clicks to read a study on another system, with Exa it is one click and the study opens with their hanging protocols.”
