Canadian Hospital improves Internal Workflow with Integrated PACS

As an integral part of the Quebec (Canada) Government's eHealth initiative, a picture archival and communications system (PACS) has helped a university hospital switch to a digital radiology environment--improving workflow, facilitating efficient information sharing among physicians, and enabling better delivery of patient care.

Agfa HealthCare (Mortsel, Belgium), a provider of information technology (IT)-enabled clinical workflow and diagnostic imaging systems, reported that Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Québec (CHUQ; Canada), which is affiliated with the Réseau Universitaire Intégré de Santé (RUIS) of Université Laval (Canada) region, has successfully implemented its Impax 6 PACS.

In late 2006, Agfa HealthCare was selected as the preferred vendor for the Quebec Government's request for proposal to implement a PACS across all 51 sites of the RUIS of Université Laval region, which yearly perform more than 2.2 million radiology exams. In addition, dual Diagnostic Imaging repositories (DI-r) were required to manage centrally the storage and sharing of every exam completed in the region. Over an 18-month period, Agfa HealthCare and members of RUIS Université Laval's hospitals and teams worked diligently to oversee the successful implementation of Agfa HealthCare's Impax 6 PACS and DI-r solution across the entire region. Six months after the winter 2008 completion, CHUQ is experiencing the full benefits of the new technology.

"Prior to the implementation of Impax 6, it was extremely difficult for physicians to quickly gain access to previous patient exams, and they would sometimes have to go through laborious search to find the screen films they needed,” said Dr. Paul Langis, assistant radiologic department director at Hôpital Saint-François d'Assise (Quebec, Canada). "With Impax 6, physicians can now reduce the number of redundancies, share patient reports in real-time, optimize workflow, and call up a digital image quickly, which has provided CHUQ with the opportunity to reduce wait-times for exam interpretation.”

Before the introduction of PACS, CHUQ was manually sharing patient images between its healthcare institutions. With the implementation of Impax 6, CHUQ physicians are now sharing images electronically among its three locations and viewing current and prior exams remotely in real-time. Hôtel-Dieu de Québec, Hôpital Saint-François d'Assise, and Centre hospitalier de l'Université Laval (CHUL; Canada) are now equipped with more than 900 PACS workstations, and approximately 1,479 healthcare professionals are using the solution and noting faster patient turnaround times and decrease in overall wait times.

"With many healthcare facilities facing the need to work more efficiently and effectively, CHUQ required a solution that would help reduce costs and increase productivity without compromising its high standard of patient care,” said Dave Wilson, vice-president, Agfa HealthCare Canada. "With Impax 6 in place, CHUQ patients benefit from shorter wait-times and faster report turnaround, which enables patients to be diagnosed more quickly.”

Agfa HealthCare, a member of the Agfa-Gevaert Group, is a provider of IT-enabled clinical workflow and diagnostic image management solutions, and state-of-the-art systems for capturing and processing images in hospitals and healthcare facilities.

Related Links:
Agfa HealthCare
Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Québec