"Austin Regional Clinic just completed an exciting transition from film-based diagnostic imaging to digital diagnostic imaging. The transition actually began in the summer of 2006 when the first planning and evaluation meetings occurred and culminated with the last hardware installation at ARC Rundberg October 8th.
"The process involved Medical Diagnostic Imaging (our hardware vendor), Austin Radiological Association (ARA) and ARC. The success of this transition is primarily due to ARC staff from our IT an radiology departments, and of course our ARC physicians and providers who have embraced this change.
"So what does all that mean? It means that physicians now review the diagnostic images on their computer using a variety of features to assist them with the clinical interpretation. ARA radiologists are reviewing radiology exams within, potentially, a few hours versus an entire day. If a physician needs immediate help from the radiologist, a call can be made and they can look at the image together. If a patient goes to any of our clinics or to a specialist office, their image and radiologist report are available for review. It means one step closer to the electronic medical record.
"Mark Young expressed his appreciation o everyone involved in the project saying, ‘I want to take this opportunity to thank our physicians for embracing this change, our radiology staff for learning a new system, our IT department for the time and effort both on the hardware and programming. As with most large technology initiatives there is some fine tuning still ongoing, but given the scope and magnitude of the project, it has gone very well. Again, thanks to everyone.'"