Healthcare Workflow Processes: 3 Insights on Improvement

Healthcare systems often involve complex workflow processes. Many times, these complicated healthcare workflow processes consist of different variations and transitions that influence the management of referrals, scheduling of appointments, and transitioning to more services.

Increased complexities in healthcare workflow processes introduce barriers to efficient operations. These barriers include complex designs that hinder communication and documentation and increased resistance to change by physicians.

To achieve significant efficiencies, improving healthcare workflow processes should be a priority for care facilities. Here are three insights on how radiology businesses can improve their workflow processes, increase efficiency, and encourage technology adoption.

1. Improve Your Workflow Processes with an HTML-5-enabled Viewer

With accuracy and attention to detail being paramount in diagnostic imaging, establishing healthcare workflow processes that improve physicians’ ability to produce detailed and highly accurate reports should be a priority.

One aspect of a healthcare workflow process that leads to accurate and highly detailed reports is improved access to diagnostic images by patients and colleagues. An HTML-5-enabled and web-based viewer is a great addition that can help you improve access, improving workflow processes in your facility. By using one, your radiology department’s workflow processes can reap several benefits. Specifically, working with a leading HTML-5-enabled viewer—like Novarad’s—your organization can improve collaboration with referring physicians and other colleagues. The web viewer enables physicians to view diagnostic images from anywhere, on any device, and at any time, regardless of where their picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) servers are located.

The increased access to diagnostic images and convenience for your radiologists eliminate hurdles that limit the effectiveness of your healthcare workflow processes. Thanks to the HTML-5 web viewer, your facility can remove hurdles like delayed and inaccurate radiology reports, inadequate multispeciality collaboration on patient care, and the inability to work with available clinical decision support systems.

Adopting a suitable HTML-5 web viewer in your facility can also help your team comply with healthcare standards and guidelines. For example, Novarad’s HTML-5 web viewer is a component of the NovaPACS workflow infrastructure. Investing in the transformative solution improves your radiology department’s ability to comply with HIPAA, IHE, DICOM, and ICD-10 standards. One of the features that boost the viewer’s compliance with healthcare standards is the ability to ensure that zero protected health information is stored in the cache of an accessing device.

Cumulatively, increased access and compliance associated with HTML-5-enabled viewers can lead to further improvements in your healthcare workflow processes.

2. Enhance Your Healthcare Workflow Processes with Extensive Administrative Functions

Medical imaging and diagnostic radiology are crucial drivers toward efficient healthcare workflow processes. However, different facilities adopt PACs that have unique administrative controls, achieving different results in managing their workflows. Different solutions have different quality check functionalities, exemption management features, image compression capabilities, audit capabilities, etc.

Specifically, integrating NovaPACS—a leading and highly customizable PACS workflow produced by Novarad—adds an array of administrative functions to your radiology department. These functions help you optimize your radiology workflow processes.

In regards to audit capabilities, Novarad integrates HIPAA logs in its systems’ admin console. With this feature, your radiology department can improve its healthcare workflow processes. Notably, adopting a system that has a HIPAA-complaint architecture enables your image center managers, image center chiefs, and directors of radiology to track and audit your facility’s image workflow. This admin capability improves your facility’s workflow processes by eliminating disruptions associated with unauthorized access and HIPAA-related litigations. Other admin capabilities include checking the archive, route queue, and access points, managing preferences, editing DICOM headers and the product’s look and feel, and reviewing productivity data.

On exemption management features, Novarad’s PACS solution integrates numerous features to handle exceptions within a radiology department’s admin console. Leveraging NovaPACS, your facility’s administrators can easily merge studies, correct patient-related data, merge or split studies, and delete patient or study records. Administrators can create complex rules to enable studies to be automatically routed based on set criteria. This improves the effectiveness of your radiology facility’s workflow processes, saves time, and prevents users from having to manually route each study that needs to go to a certain location. These efficiencies prevent delayed diagnoses and prioritize stats, enhancing the quality of care.

NovaPACS exemption management feature also supports patient-related exemptions. Though assessing patient records, the system enables your facility to improve its healthcare workflow process by identifying and marking incomplete records. Improving the process of identifying incomplete patient records can help your staff request missing information before patient appointments. This eliminates delays that can affect the quality of care offered at your facility.

Another administrative function that can improve your facility’s healthcare workflow processes is the ability to compress images as per healthcare guidelines. For instance, investing in NovaPACS enables your facility to leverage Novarad’s image-compressing capabilities. The game-changing system supports image compression in accordance with American College of Radiology practice parameters. Through the solution’s admin console, your team can reap significant benefits that relate to lossy and lossless compression of diagnostic images.

In effect, extensive administrative functions in a PAC system can transform your healthcare workflow process, improving the quality of services offered by your entity.

3. Transform Your Workflow Processes with a Highly Interoperable PAC System

Interoperability refers to the ability of technologies to connect and communicate effectively despite being developed by different manufacturers in various industries.

Within the radiology space, investing in a tech system that’s highly interoperable can be a gamechanger for your facility’s healthcare workflow processes. Interoperable technologies can improve efficiency, help cut costs, and improve continuity in care.

Let’s look at CryptoChart, a modern image-sharing solution developed by Novarad. When you invest in this solution, your radiology facility can receive diagnostic images from various digital imaging and communications in medicine sources. By doing so, all the episodes of care across the diagnostic and treatment journey, especially for acute patients with chronic and complex conditions, are brought together for excellence in diagnosing. This can improve your facility’s healthcare workflow process by eliminating challenges that hinder the sharing of patient records between physicians.

Increased collaboration due to the ease of sharing patient records enhances the efficiency of your workflow processes. Using CryptoChart as a better way to visually bridge gaps in medicine, you can work remotely yet connect better. Eventually, improved healthcare workflows improve patient satisfaction, encourage technology adoption by staff members, and increase profitability in your facility.

Here at Novarad, we believe that the key to a successful imaging center is to work smarter, not harder, to deliver the type of care and outcomes that patients desire.

To see how we can help improve your workflows, feel free to reach out to our workflow specialists today!