NovaCardio: Transforming Cardiology with Top Tech

With growing amounts of patient data, changing payment models, ongoing mergers and acquisitions, and increasing pressures to contain costs, hospitals and cardiologists face significant challenges. Furthermore, as the number of Americans with cardiovascular disease rises, the volume of patients whom cardiologists treat is also seeing unparalleled growth and is expected to continue rising. By 2035, nearly half of the US population will have a form of cardiovascular disease, The American Heart Association warns. To keep pace with an increase in patient numbers, cardiologists must possess the technology and capabilities necessary for efficient treatment.

Changes in healthcare hinder the ability of cardiologists to work effectively. When data-producing technologies multiply, each system has its own data management needs. Mergers and acquisitions create additional silos. Accessing data becomes difficult as cardiology departments begin requiring multiple catheterizations, echocardiograms, and vascular labs. The demand for new imaging studies and complex workflows involving scheduling, registration, chart reviews, documentation, reporting, and billing is surging, putting pressure on cardiology facilities, which are working from disparate locations via multiple systems. This means backlogs increase and vital data goes overlooked.

To manage these inefficiencies, more cardiology facilities are adopting EHR systems. With this technology, facilities get efficient, organized care due to having:

• Quick access to patient records
• The ability to securely share electronic information with clinicians and patients
• Current and correct patient information
• Improved patient and provider communication and reliable prescribing
• Streamlined coding and billing
• Reduced costs from decreased paperwork, reduced duplicate testing, improved safety, and fewer medical errors

With an EHR system, cardiologists can diagnose and treat patients more efficiently, improving patient care while upgrading privacy and security.

Additional technology, like digital reporting software, enhances performance by enabling data to be easily captured and analyzed, leading to more swift and accurate results while increasing the efficiency of operations, including patient scheduling, inventory management, and cath lab utilization.

By studying insights from patient data and analyzing it for more productive outcomes, necessary processes—including the scheduling of appointments and diagnosing patients—are streamlined for increased efficiency. Digital reporting software further improves operational competence by engaging with patients during their treatment journey to reduce miscommunication, rebalance workloads for a fairer scale of operations, and automate workflows with software, including cath lab software and lab management software.

With digital reporting software, hospitals gain the ability to:

• Enhance clinical decision support for care-providing teams across various operations
• Standardize clinical pathways for qualitative-based decisions and improved patient care
• Integrate diagnostics for a more comprehensive patient view

Cardiologists should adopt lean management principles to fully reap the benefits of cardiology software and maintain efficient practices. Highlighting the importance of simplifying workflow, lean management encourages cardiologists to review their goals and processes. After doing so, they can evaluate how their current work model can be improved, and departments can then test and expand possible solutions.

To bolster lean management, medical researchers must encourage cardiology departments to ask themselves crucial questions like:

• What are our existing subspecialties? What challenges do they face?
• What are the different staff roles? What obstacles might they encounter?
• What systems and technologies do we employ? How well do they correspond with one another?

Cardiology departments must assess their strengths and weaknesses, employing their findings to craft an efficient workflow better suited to the needs of their patients. To best serve an increasingly vulnerable population, cardiologists should first access available patient data to assess the average baseline performance, leveraging their discoveries on patient experience to unearth opportunities and identify areas in need of improvement. Next, cardiology leaders should collaborate with clinical and management teams to discuss where to apply alterations and how they should be orchestrated. By implementing sustainable change management programs, cardiologists remove disorganization and improve their workflow.

Novarad ensures that cardiologists have the first-rate technology needed to practice lean management, serving patients with increased competence. With an intuitive, user-friendly design, NovaCardio consolidates imaging specialties for a complete view of a patient’s medical workup, all from a single workstation. It eliminates repetitive data entry and reduces errors, disposing of data silos while ensuring a higher delivery of patient care. Alerting cardiologists of the most critical patient statuses, the Intellirouting and Smart Worklist features enable cardiologists to expedite treatment for those in most need.

With image viewing and reporting across modalities and NovaWeb remote access, cardiologists gain flexibility, empowering them to provide life-saving care from any location. Furthermore, NovaCardio assists IT departments with accreditation compliance and cloud-based or traditional software deployment models. With advanced imaging and diagnostic tools—including Calcium Scoring, Vessel Analysis, Auto Ejection Fraction, and Oral Segmentation—NovaCardio bolsters efficiency while improving the quality of patient care. With Novarad, it's easier to serve cardiology patients more efficiently. All stakeholders benefit from its state-of-the-art advances, automating workflow and improving patient care.

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!