Using Radiology Software to Streamline Your Workflow for Efficiency

Radiology is a relatively large specialty that touches almost all aspects of healthcare. But with such extensive reach, radiology departments contain a great deal of inefficiency, creating room for significant improvement.

As with other areas of healthcare, radiology clinics and departments face pressures to enhance workflow and efficiency-related deliverables. There are pressures to improve evidence-based care, enhance consistency, and reduce costs in the short term. Over the long term, there are pressures to integrate big data and technology to increase precision imaging and personalize care.

Regardless of the extensive reach of radiology and its inefficiencies and the pressures to improve workflow, certain tools can help you streamline your workflow and boost your efficiency. At the top of the list is radiology software.

How Radiology Software Can Help Streamline Your Workflow and Boost Efficiency

1. Improve Your Workflow with Exceptional Interfacing and Integration

Ad hoc point-to-point and paper-based interfaces were previously used to manage information and aid workflow in healthcare facilities. Without proper integration, these systems couldn’t guarantee workflow efficiency due to incomplete patient records, lack of consistency and accuracy in patient information, error-prone data entry processes, and cross-specialty collaboration challenges.

However, the introduction of radiology software has improved interfacing and integration with electronic medical records (EMRs), contributing to a streamlined workflow and efficiency. Radiology software has also introduced scripting capabilities that simplify the launching of image viewers via a secure globally unique identifier or a link that’s available to EMRs per HL7 standards. These capabilities automate repetitive tasks and improve access to patient images, enhancing your clinic’s or department’s workflow and boosting efficiency.

For example, NovaPACS is a novel radiology software that once integrated into your practice, can help your clinic or department reap the numerous benefits that come with exceptional integration and interfacing. A typical NovaPACS’s integration enables the launch of Novarad’s image viewer via a secure link provided by an EMR. The solution’s integration also helps automate the process of launching studies from the EMR. These interfacing benefits help eliminate redundant processes, improving your department’s workflow and efficiency.

NovaPACS’s exceptional integration with EMRs also enhances interactions with your practice’s image management algorithm. Due to the limited-access code, only authorized users have access to a specific study that’s launched from an EMR. No additional authentication requirements are required for the authorized user. Eliminating unnecessary authentication procedures, besides guaranteeing archive safety, improves your facility’s workflow. Ultimately, streamlined operations boost your facility’s efficiency.

2. Enhance Flexibility with a Customizable Radiology Solution
Today, there are many one-size-fits-all radiology software out there. Though they have their benefits, they fall short compared to tailored radiology software solutions. With customizable radiology software, you have a solution that fits your practice’s needs perfectly. As a result, it can help your clinic or department automate workflows and achieve maximum efficiency.

Customizable radiology software also enables you to adopt unique features, like hybrid storage. With a hybrid storage system, you have the liberty to choose various storage combinations, such as onsite and offsite storage models or models that include cloud and virtual machine capabilities. With hybrid storage, your facility can enjoy increased data security and ease of access to patient records.

By choosing a scalable solution like NovaPACS, your facility can reap the benefits associated with Novarad’s hybrid storage system. It keeps an onsite and online copy of all images for seven years, and the online version is a real-time copy that’s securely stored in the cloud. With the hybrid storage solution, your facility can maintain high standards of reliability and uptime, ensuring consistent and reliable operations in your practice. This boosts your workflow and efficiency.

Another unique feature of customizable radiology software is web-deployed workstations. With these, your facility can enhance patient engagements, reduce practitioner’s fatigue, and improve the handling of stressful hospital situations without causing delays or interruptions. For example, in Mayfield, Kentucky, the Jackson Purchase Medical Center invested in NovaPACS to leverage its customizable and web-deployed workstation. The facility ultimately streamlined its imaging workflow and improved its efficiency. Most of the credit goes to improved access to images because staff members could view the records on any computer or mobile device and from any location. This helped reduce the legwork and time needed to deliver quality radiology services, improving the facility’s radiology workflow and efficiency.

3. Streamline Radiology Workflow with Enhanced Collaboration Capabilities

As the delivery of radiology services evolves and becomes increasingly important in healthcare, there’s a need for approaching patient care from a more team-oriented perspective and thus, to enhance and streamline interprofessional collaboration to reap the benefits therein.

Working with radiology software that enhances your facility’s collaboration capabilities is your best bet. Novel radiology software can equip your facility with tools that enhance communication between practitioners, improve image distribution, and boost compliance with healthcare standards. Benefits derived from improved collaboration, image sharing, and compliance can help streamline your radiology workflow, boosting efficiency in your facility.

Installing Novarad’s enterprise imaging solution in your facility can help you balance access and security. This software uses Novarad’s secure web computing products—like eForms, text alerts, enhanced image sharing, mobile and web-based viewing capabilities, etc.—to support instant communication and image sharing. With these unique features, your facility can eliminate delays caused by complicated communication protocols between healthcare staff. This helps streamline your facility’s radiology workflow and boost efficiency.

The Novarad Enterprise Imaging also improves your facility’s risk management and compliance capabilities. With this radiology solution, images are captured, stored, and retrieved from a centralized repository that's HIPAA compliant. Without the need to route images, the solution ensures that personal health information isn't left on accessing devices. This eliminates interruptions caused by data breaches and expensive audits by oversight authorities. Increased security and compliance also help eliminate the need for practitioners to review their operations for compliance during life-saving clinical work. The resulting benefits can help streamline your radiology workflow and boost efficiency.

Bottom line

Radiology software holds numerous benefits that can help unlock workflow and efficiency benefits in your facility. Among the benefits are improved integration, enhanced interprofessional collaboration, and maximizing returns through customizable features. While these benefits are reachable, choosing radiology software from a leading healthcare tech company like Novarad is your best bet.

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!