Grace Cottage Hospital’s 2009 Hospital Report Card

2008 QUALITY IMPROVEMENT INITIATIVES

Clinical Quality Improvement
Picture Archiving Communication System (PACS)
Time Frame: 2008 and ongoing

Project Description:
A Picture Archiving Communication System (PACS) was introduced into Grace Cottage Hospital’s Radiology Department with the goal of a quick turn around time between when a patient is seen by a radiologic technologist at Grace Cottage, and when an off-site radiologist can read the image and send a report back to Grace Cottage. The patient can be diagnosed and treated or transported to another facility in a more timely manner. Prior to the use of PACS, patients had to wait for an image to be read. This decreased the diagnosis cycle time, especially at night.

Problem:
PACS enables patients seen at Grace Cottage twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week to receive a prompt diagnosis using imaging technology. The initial evaluation period showed that CT images could take from 30 - 60 minutes to transmit to the off-site radiologist.

Goal:
The initial goal of PACS was to provide patients with timely night time readings. This goal was achieved by the addition of a dedicated line to improve transmission time in sending images to an off-site radiologist.

Intervention Process:
In 2008, during the hours of 5:00pm through 8:00am, the transmission times for 143 images were tracked to gather a baseline time frame. This tracking continued after the installation of the dedicated line.

Evaluation Process and Results:
1. It was discovered that CT scans took 45 – 60 minutes to transmit to the radiologist for a preliminary reading before the dedicated line was installed.

2. The same CT scan took less than 10 minutes to transmit after the dedicated line was installed. This greatly improved the diagnosis time in emergency situations such as a stroke.