A digital archive system allows health care professionals at Morton Plant hospitals to provide more efficient care to patients.
By MELIA BOWIE
Published May 14, 2004
[Times photo: Janel Schroeder-Norton]
Radiology technician Jimmy Rodriguez view an X-ray on the new digital imaging archive system while Renee Brosnan, center, and her instructor Catherine Dolan review charts at Morton Plant North Bay Hospital in New Port Richey. The technology fosters faster, more accurate diagnoses and care.
NEW PORT RICHEY - Now disappearing from a hospital near you: those familiar X-ray films that once lined walls like so much art.
Replacing them is a new Web-based, digital library called the Picture Archive Communications system.
First introduced about 10 years ago to improve patient care and medical efficiency, the system now is being used at Morton Plant North Bay Hospital. It is the first such system in a Pasco County hospital, North Bay chief executive Bill Jennings said. Trial runs began in April.
About $3-million is being spent to install PACS in Morton Plant Mease Health Care's four hospitals. So far it's up and running at the emergency rooms in Countryside, Clearwater, Dunedin and New Port Richey. The network's outpatient centers (including one in Trinity) are scheduled to receive the system in 2005-06.
PACS works by electronically capturing and storing images taken of patients using X-ray machines, and MRI or CAT scans.
The stored data can then be viewed almost instantly by Morton Plant Mease physicians based in other cities or sites - ensuring a faster diagnosis and immediate second opinions.
And as outside factors such as rising insurance rates drive neurosurgeons and other specialty physicians out of the area, the electronic access means "it's like having a specialist here," Jennings said.
Overall, the imaging advance has "speeded up the process," said Darin Weightman, imaging service coordinator at North Bay.
PACS also puts an end to the use of X-ray film - a staple of medical diagnosis for almost a century.
Radiology staff at North Bay said they were happy to see it go as they worked at a cluster of PACS vision stations May 5.
The $740,000 system, now used hospitalwide, means more convenience, less paperwork and less clutter.
And unlike film, PACS images can be enlarged, reduced, lightened or darkened so that doctors can make better searches for fractures, clots or other conditions.
"It's better for patients," Weightman said. "It's less repeat images (for radiologists to read) and it's less exposure to radiation (for patients.)
Ultimately, the idea is to link care in-house and across city and county lines.
For example, with PACS an emergency room doctor treating a trauma patient can do so without having to wait on films. That ER doctor, working downstairs, can simultaneously view the same images as a surgeon waiting upstairs to take over.
Cost was a factor in the timing of PACS' arrival at North Bay, hospital staff said.
Nationally, such electronic overhauls have been taking root at a growing number of hospitals and medical facilities.
"A lot of hospitals are doing it now," said Dr. Larry Schwartz, MRI director and a radiologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Schwartz said his facility has used it since 1998 with no drawbacks. "It allows us to better coordinate specialty care."
PACS technology also opens the door for the greater practice of global medicine. Such equipment enables radiologists in India, for example, to read images from a patient in New Port Richey.
"But we're not there yet," said Jennings, noting among other obstacles is the issue of state licensing for overseas radiologists or medical staff. "Whether or not we actually do that, that's a long way out."
- Melia Bowie covers business in Pasco County. She can be reached in west Pasco at 869-6229, or toll-free at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 6229. Her e-mail address is bowie@sptimes.com
