Flexible RIS Enables Facilities To Adjust To Changing Needs

CHICAGO, Nov. 28 — The CARESTREAM RIS platform equips healthcare providers to quickly and easily adapt data capture and workflow to address meaningful use requirements and other changes in healthcare practices and regulations worldwide. At the annual RSNA meeting, the company will demonstrate its ability to capture and share specific data required to meet U.S. Federal Government guidelines for meaningful use. The company plans to submit an application for certification of its RIS as an EHR module that meets meaningful use criteria in the first half of 2011. Due to its built-in flexibility, CARESTREAM RIS can meet the meaningful use initiative without requiring a new software release.

“Being able to redefine RIS workflows allows healthcare facilities to respond to government regulations including meaningful use, as well as adjust processes to satisfy emerging business needs,” Diana L. Nole, President, Digital Medical Solutions, Carestream Health. “Our RIS also offers advanced business intelligence tools that can help imaging centers, hospitals and healthcare systems of all sizes improve productivity, efficiency and profitability.”

The company will demonstrate the collection and/or receipt of the following data, which meets the first phase of meaningful use requirements: patient demographics, vital signs, smoking status, immunization records, diseases, allergies, and advanced directives for patients over 65. It also will validate that patient medications were tracked by referring physicians.

The powerful business intelligence capabilities of the CARESTREAM RIS deliver easy access to the imaging workflow and accurate data about personnel and equipment utilization so managers can make strategic decisions to help improve profitability. This data includes: profitability rates for each modality; patient wait times and volumes by modality or location; and the ability to examine imaging workflows to eliminate bottlenecks or unnecessary tasks.      

Broad Functionality Eliminates Need for Separate Systems
CARESTREAM RIS integrates easily with other information systems and delivers broad functionality that—in the case of one large U.S. hospital—replaced the need to integrate nine independent systems. This functionality includes:

• Innovative patient scheduling and tracking, including a rules engine that will notify schedulers if they are breaking a user-defined rule. This can improve patient safety and reduce scheduling errors.
• Built-in critical results reporting, including the ability to send text messages to referring physicians and track receipt. Administrative screens facilitate data collection and reporting required by JCAHO.
• Native ACR peer review module that tracks reviews of original diagnoses by a second radiologist and meets requirements set by the American College of Radiology
• Fully featured structured reporting that includes selection of a standard report based on the exam procedure and embeds patient and exam data into the report 
• Embedded voice recognition for an efficient reading workflow
• Voice-driven, mouse-less reporting to further enhance radiologist ease of use and productivity
• Web-based scheduling for referring physicians with an option to allow patients to make or change appointments
• Referral reports that show how many patients each physician is referring and if their referral rates are trending higher or lower
• Specialized mammography reporting that meets country-specific requirements in North America and Europe 
• Inventory management, document management and film tracking; and
• Support for standard or user-defined procedure codes.

CARESTREAM RIS combines outstanding functionality with scalability to support the efficient sharing of information across single-site or multi-site healthcare systems of all sizes.

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About Carestream Health 
Carestream Health is a worldwide provider of dental and medical imaging systems and healthcare IT solutions; molecular imaging systems for the life science research and drug discovery/development market segments; and x-ray film and digital x-ray products for the non-
destructive testing market. For more information about the company’s broad portfolio of products, solutions and services, please contact your Carestream Health representative or visit www.carestreamhealth.com.

CARESTREAM is a trademark of Carestream Health.
2010