Introduction

In the last few decades, the correlation between advances in technology and the well-being of humanity—in regard to life expectancy and global population—has become a well-established fact. Advances in healthcare technology have introduced various healthcare-improving capabilities. Ranging from timely and accurate diagnoses to streamlined workflows and maximized revenues, these advances in technology bring numerous benefits into the healthcare space.

Importantly, recent studies have confirmed the close relationship between technology advances and improved healthcare. One 2017 study showed that advances in health information technology improve patient well-being by reducing medication errors, preventing adverse drug effects, and enhancing compliance with pre-set guidelines. In a 2016 systematic review and meta-analysis, the findings showed that well-implemented healthcare technologies can enhance the quality of healthcare, reducing medication errors and adverse drug events, promoting adherence to guidelines and enhancing efficiency. 

A white paper—titled “AI in Healthcare”—on artificial intelligence (AI) and healthcare showed that healthcare facilities can reap significant gains with AI-integrating solutions. The paper showed that AI can particularly help automate time-consuming and manual tasks, enhancing radiology workflows, reducing staff stress, and improving profitability within healthcare facilities. 

While numerous benefits accompany healthcare technologies, numerous challenges have rocked the healthcare-tech relationship.

Advances in healthcare technologies have been associated with physician burnout. With different technologies being unique in terms of usability and intuitiveness, there’s a likelihood that integrating such technologies into a healthcare facility will complicate operations and increase the likelihood of staff burnout. 

Also, advances in healthcare technology can introduce interoperability challenges. (Interoperability in healthcare refers to the ability of care providers and different record systems to share patient information electronically.) Interoperability challenges affect healthcare workflows and productivity by complicating the management of inconsistencies in information from different sources, introducing bottlenecks in accessing vital client records and high costs of hiring interoperability-management teams.

To confirm the negative impacts of technology on healthcare facilities, several studies have linked technology to various challenges that impact workflow, staff productivity, and profitability in healthcare facilities. 

Notably, a 2020 study has shown that there is a correlation between the ubiquity of technology and increased workloads and inefficient workflows. Essentially, workflow interruptions and workloads increase with technology ubiquity due to increased workplace speed and pressure resulting from increased workloads and the need for shorter turnaround times. This mainly applies to domain-specific technologies, like radiology picture archiving and communication systems (PACS), imaging tools, etc.

More 2020 research showed that technology is a contributor to physician burnout. In the study, 25.6% of the practicing specialists and 19% of the residents and fellows reported having shown one or more symptoms of burnout. Among the participants, 74.5% who had reported experiencing burnout identified electronic health records (EHRs) as a major contributor.

A 2016 study showed that technological advances in healthcare could lead to unintended consequences. In particular, advances in health information technology can lead to the misinterpretation of healthcare operations as a linear process. This leads to highly inflexible workarounds and the misinterpretation of communication as a process for information transfer, rather than a means of collaborating with peers. Such misinterpretations may lead to the disruption of feedback from healthcare stakeholders, the overloading of decision-support mechanisms, and the increased need for constant oversight to catch errors.

Despite the mixed bag of benefits and challenges linked to healthcare technology, these innovations hold significant potential for care facilities, particularly in advancing efficiency in crucial healthcare subspecialties. For instance, radiologic software can introduce substantial benefits that can help improve workflows, reduce staff stress, and maximize revenues.

Since healthcare is considerably broad, assessing the impact of technology in the radiology space can provide more clarity—in particular, evaluating the role that radiologic software plays in improving radiology workflows, enhancing staff and patient satisfaction, and maximizing profitability.

Radiologic Software for Improved Radiological Operations and Outcomes

With the increased integration of paperless systems in imaging practices, radiologic software has become the norm in radiology information systems (RIS). (Note that radiologic software refers to a collection of commands that instruct imaging computers how to respond to different inputs that relate to radiologic tasks. These tasks include image capturing, resizing, encrypting, and more.) Such imaging solutions introduce various capabilities that influence workflows, patient and staff satisfaction, and profitability in radiology practices.

The following sections evaluate how radiologic software affects workflows, stress and burnout levels, and revenues in imaging facilities.

1. Radiologic Software Is Helping Maintain Optimized Workflows

With the increased implementation of EHRs, more healthcare practices are continuing to see the revolutionizing effects of these technologies. Nowhere has the impact of EHRs been more profound than in the radiology space. Notably, RIS, which have become the backbone of imaging enterprises, increasingly rely on EHRs. Importantly, all facets of imaging workflows—including scheduling, order entry, protocol selection, and creation of reports—are affected by the effectiveness of EHRs.

It’s worth noting that many transformative effects of radiologic software are realized upon proper management of the post-implementation phase. A workflow-improving radiologic software requires optimized integration with key components of radiology workflow, full access to patients’ medical history, effective measures to ensure data integrity, and intuitive interfaces to minimize errors and support time. 

In regard to optimizing workflows, radiologic software plays a big role in improving patient scheduling within radiology practices. A 2018 report pointed out that more than 3% of imaging patients miss scheduled radiology appointments, so improving scheduling can improve radiology businesses. Integrating radiologic software that improves scheduling can particularly help reduce the rate of no-shows, which in turn, reduces the negative effects of no-shows on a radiology department’s efficiency. 

Reducing no-shows also helps prevent delayed diagnosis and treatment, which may lead to complications and worsen a facility’s quality of care. These benefits help eliminate bottlenecks that affect a radiology department’s workflow.

Furthermore, improving scheduling to cut the percentage of no-shows helps reduce resource wastage in radiology departments. By leveraging novel scheduling capabilities supported by radiologic software, radiology departments can reduce money lost by spending too much time scheduling patients, selecting suitable examination protocols, and determining suitable pre-authorizations for a patient’s procedures. This helps radiology departments cut costs, maximizing the profitability of a radiology department or standalone imaging clinic. It also helps eliminate workflow disruptions.

Integrating scheduling-improving radiologic software to help optimize workflows can be beneficial for an imaging business. For instance, investing in an industry-leading radiology solution allows your facility to leverage self-scheduling capabilities, which permit your department's clients to request procedure times and dates that are most suitable for their schedules. This helps a radiology department reduce no-shows and avoid losses that come with those no-shows. In turn, this contributes to optimized workflows and maximizes revenues for radiology departments.

Radiologic software also helps maintain optimized workflows by leveraging imaging informatics and radiology-based data analytics. 

Data analytics

Radiologic software that facilitates the real-time analysis of data produced by computerized radiology solutions improves workflow by unearthing negative trends before a crisis happens. Radiology analytics and image-processing capabilities supported by novel radiologic software enhance the interpretability of imaging content. Proper data analytics in radiology helps with reducing noise, adjusting contrast, handling missing data, and removing physiological artifacts. Therefore, challenges that increase inaccuracies in imaging reports are eliminated, as are data-related workflow bottlenecks.

Also, data analytics supported by radiologic software plays a vital role in improving workflows by availing actionable administrative information within radiology departments. This helps chief radiologists manage imaging operations, performances, and outcomes, which helps streamline radiology workflows because imaging center managers and chief radiologists make accurate and impactful decisions that touch on vital metrics in their radiology facilities. Over time, accurate analysis and interpretation of imaging data help optimize a radiology department's workflow. Consequently, this helps improve the quality, availability, and reliability of your radiology department’s services.

That said, having a case in point is vital in clarifying how radiologic software can help improve a radiology department’s data analytics, reaping the benefits therein. Take the case of Novarad’s RIS. Installing the novel radiologic software introduces integrated business analytic tools that can help your imaging business make workflow-improving decisions. In particular, installing the radiologic software enables chief radiologists to gather and analyze insights into effective procedures and referring physician trends. This helps improve workflows by improving a radiology department's engagement with referring physicians. 

Importantly, improving engagement with referring physicians helps cut losses associated with referral leakages. (Note that referral leakage occurs when patients leave a healthcare facility’s network and seek services from out-of-network healthcare providers. This is mainly attributed to lack of subspecialty expertise, ineffective patient retention initiatives, etc. Facilities that cannot control referral leakage lose significant amounts of revenue.) One study showed that between 55% and 65% of revenues are lost due to referral leakage. This translates to losses of between $821,000 and $971,000 per physician per year. The total leakage costs for a healthcare facility with 100-plus affiliated providers can range between $78 million and $97 million each year. Given the magnitude of losses associated with referral leakages, it’s prudent for chief radiologists to emphasize radiologic software that can help improve engagement with referring physicians.

Imaging informatics

A study published in the American Journal of Roentgenology showed that radiology departments need to invest in imaging informatics—both experts and data systems—to remain competitive and continue reaping the benefits of efficient imaging informatics systems. Imaging informatics comprises many processes and systems—picture archiving and communication systems (PACS), RIS, and more—that imaging facilities need in order to optimize their workflows. In turn, it offers better, faster, and cheaper services.

With the increased adoption of technology in radiology, it's important that imaging facilities engage informatics experts to help adopt solutions that boost their workflows. Specifically, allowing tech-savvy chief radiologists to influence IT decisions helps facilities select radiologic solutions that help optimize workflows. In this light, making custom changes can be a game-changer for a radiology practice. For instance, with radiology informatics, data analytics, and tech-savvy radiology administrators, an imaging facility can invest in a highly customizable PACS, like NovaPACS. With the solution being easily customizable, informatics experts and tech-savvy administrators can introduce custom features that boost radiology workflows by a large margin. Some of these customizations may relate to unique worklists and workflows and tailored storage models that may leverage onsite or offsite capabilities, virtual machines, and cloud-based features. Effectively, working with customized radiologic software—thanks to informatics experts and tech-savvy radiology administrators—can help improve imaging facility’s workflows. Ultimately, this enhances the quality of care and profitability of your radiology business.

2. Radiologic Software Is Reducing Staff Stress and Burnout

Burnout refers to the mental weariness associated with a gradual loss of energy and enthusiasm. Comprising three aspects—cynicism, exhaustion, and inefficiency—burnout is the product of a situation where job demands exceed job resources. Job demands comprise job insecurity, role ambiguity, and conflict and work overload. Conversely, job resources comprise autonomy, social support from colleagues and administrators, supervisory assistance, and prompt performance feedback.

Regarding prevalence, stress and burnout have been found to be considerably high in the imaging space. In a 2018 study, breast radiologists recorded significant levels of burnout. Specifically, 69% of the respondents had experienced emotional exhaustion, and 63% had experienced depersonalization. The stress and burnout levels were similar to those recorded among pediatric and musculoskeletal radiologists. These findings confirmed that stress and burnout is a major problem in the radiology space and suggested that certain inherent aspects in the radiology space led to increased rates of burnout. 

Generally, the effects of stress and burnout may range from minor inaccuracies to the inability to interpret patient images and records accurately. With inaccurate radiology reports, a facility’s workflow is adversely affected because patients have to seek retests to address their health concerns. Also, increased stress and burnout increase the risk of unnecessary treatment caused by inaccurate diagnoses. This adversely impacts the productivity and effectiveness of radiology staff because if an imaging specialist gets negative feedback, that can attract penalties like fines or suspension based on the governing laws.

In terms of cost, burnout in healthcare introduces various heavy costs. First, increased turnover among imaging staff adversely impacts imaging facilities by cutting clinical hours and increasing associated costs. One study showed that the annual costs of burnout linked to turnover and reduced clinical hours are approximately $7,600 per physician. Second, on a national scale, expenses related to reduced clinical hours and physician turnover were approximately $4.6 billion in the United States. Also, errors caused by burnout introduce considerable financial burdens—approximately $20 billion per year. These costs relate to increased length of stay, malpractice suits, costs for retests, etc. These alarming statistics pose a significant threat to the effectiveness and profitability of radiology practices.

With the trend in the prevalence and cost burden of stress and burnout, how can radiologic software help imaging facilities mitigate the negative effects?

Radiologic software helps imaging facilities combat stress and burnout by improving several vital processes. These include improving report sharing and collaboration, enhancing compliance, improving the management of workload, and supporting web-based access portals.

Radiologic software integrates fast and secure report sharing and collaboration capabilities that can help radiology practitioners prevent stress and burnout. In particular, radiologic software integrates QR codes that help share patient images and medical chart information safely, securely, and instantly. This eliminates the need for cumbersome processes like burning CDs and using complex login details. In turn, this helps cut fatigue, preventing stress and burnout among imaging practitioners.

Take CryptoChart as an example. Integrating this award-winning technology enables radiology staff to leverage Novarad’s cloud-based object vault to store data securely and work with DICOM images from any PACS or modality. This helps reduce burnout-inducing challenges associated with the lack of interoperability between PACS and different imaging modalities. Also, the radiologic solution supports the smart compressing and encrypting of patient records and charts that are received via an HL7 interface. It’s possible to open and read large images and report much faster, eliminating delays. Cumulatively, these features shorten turnaround times, increase staff’s ability to work effectively, and increase productivity. Over time, the efficiency unlocking features help prevent stress and burnout among imaging staff.

Additionally, radiologic software integrates vital measures that help with compliance. Given the large number of regulations touching on different aspects of radiology, having systems that comply with regulations is a game-changer. Working with radiologic software like Nova RIS and NovaPACS in particular helps imaging businesses comply with privacy and security standards specified by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Also, integrating Novarad’s radiologic solutions that comply with other regulatory requirements, like IHE and ICD-10 guidelines, unlocks significant benefits. By adhering to compliance guidelines and standards, these solutions help prevent compliance-related complications that increase stress and fatigue among imaging practitioners. Effectively, these solutions help prevent burnout.

Another factor that increases burnout among imaging staff is poorly managed workloads. However, adopting radiology software that provides analytics of patient caseloads in a radiology facility can help chief radiologists manage patient caseloads, preventing fatigue, stress, and burnout. Working with a radiologic software like Nova RIS allows radiology staff to leverage integrated management capabilities. Integrated management features help chief radiologists analyze and improve an imaging facility’s health and efficiently increase patient caseloads. In turn, this helps prevent fatigue and burnout by enabling imaging practitioners to be assigned roles based on their subspecialty, availability, and workload. Eventually, this translates to increased efficiency in a radiology facility.

Enabling web-based access portals is another important burnout-mitigating benefit that radiology software can introduce in an imaging facility. Notably, leveraging web-based platforms in imaging helps improve the speed of surface rendering and the fly-through speed. This means imaging professionals can easily collect data from client reports, creating three-dimensional patient images on a web-based platform. This helps eliminate cumbersome image manipulation processes, helping eliminate fatigue and burnout among imaging staff. Furthermore, web-based platforms enable physicians to access patient records from any device and any internet-enabled location. These features eliminate the need for physicians to drive to hospitals at night or during breaks, since they only need to log into the imaging platform and complete required tasks. The resulting convenience helps avoid fatigue and reduces the chances of burnout.

Let’s look at the case of Jackson Purchase Medical Center in Mayfield, Kentucky. Upon installing a novel PACS, the facility streamlined its radiology workflow and information-sharing capabilities. The radiologic software also helped the imaging facility save time and cut physician legwork by enabling staff members to access patient images and reports via any mobile device or computer and from any internet-enabled location, including homes, vacation destinations, etc. Effectively, the resulting convenience helped cut travel-related fatigue, reducing the chances of burnout at the facility.

3. Radiologic Software Is Helping Cut Costs in Radiology Departments/Clinics

Industry surveys have shown that the United States wastes between $7.5 billion and $12 billion per year on medical imaging. Causes of the massive wastage include physician errors in selecting the most appropriate tests, increased patient demand for radiology services, and defensive medicine. Also, research findings in 2015 estimated that healthcare costs within the United States account for approximately $3.2 trillion, or close to 18% of the country’s GDP. Diagnostic imaging is a significant contributor to massive healthcare spending. These findings paint an alarming picture, and there’s increased pressure for healthcare businesses to cut costs while still offering high-quality care.

While diagnostic imaging contributes to the rising costs of healthcare, it also holds significant potential in lowering healthcare costs. With streamlined diagnostic imaging practices, cutting healthcare costs becomes a reality. 

So, how can imaging practices streamline their operations to help cut costs in radiology departments? Adopting novel radiologic software can introduce significant cost savings. This can be achieved by improving cross-specialty collaboration, lowering costs of accessing patient images and reports, and improving staff productivity.

Regarding cross-specialty collaboration, radiologic software introduces capabilities that streamline a facility’s radiology workflows. Specifically, it introduces fast, easy, and secure ways of sharing data between imaging specialists. With the effective sharing of data between imaging professionals, radiology facilities can harness expertise for subspecialty experts, helping improve diagnostic activities. Cross-specialty cuts turnaround times by eliminating challenges associated with diagnosing unique cases. Ultimately, this helps optimize profitability in a radiology practice.

Working with CryptoChart, imaging practices can easily share patient images and reports without the need for logins or CDs. By using a simple QR code, patients and healthcare staff can easily share vital records with different specialists. This helps improve diagnostic imaging workflows, helping eliminate costs associated with long turnaround times, misdiagnoses, and retests. The novel radiologic software also helps cut costs by enhancing compliance and simplifying adoption. With a time-sensitive QR code, highly encrypted passwords (3000-bit-plus), and no patient information left behind, your radiology facility can easily comply with HIPAA guidelines. This helps prevent costs, audits, and penalties. Furthermore, CryptoChart is a plug-and-play solution that can be set up in a few minutes and doesn’t need special training to run. These features help cut costs associated with training imaging staff and delays due to complicated installations of radiologic solutions.

Radiologic software plays a vital role in improving the productivity of imaging staff and helps cut costs of imaging. Different imaging solutions help simplify cumbersome processes, including diagnosing patients, eliminate delays, drive up staff and patient satisfaction, and boost efficiency. These benefits help cut costs linked with high patient and staff turnover, lost opportunities due to long turnaround times, and more.

Let's look at radiologic software like MobileRad as an example. With the software, imaging specialists and referring physicians can securely view and compare patient reports. With Novarad’s Lite viewer, the solution permits the viewing of patient reports and images from any web-enabled mobile device. This eliminates the need for imaging specialists to travel to a hospital to view a patient’s reports. It also protects imaging professionals from burnout, which may reduce their overall productivity. The cumulative benefits of easy, secure, and convenient access to patient images and reports translate to reduced operational costs for a radiology department or standalone clinic.

Bottom Line

Given the importance of radiology in today’s healthcare, it’s vital for imaging departments and standalone radiology clinics to optimize workflows, reduce staff stress, and maximize revenues. Radiologic software is essential to achieving these objectives. It optimizes imaging workflows by improving scheduling and helping reduce the percentage of no-shows. By integrating data analytics and informatics, radiology software also helps radiology departments leverage insights provided by a facility’s data and enables the adoption of customized solutions. The resulting benefits help streamline imaging workflows, improve efficiency, and maximize profits.

Furthermore, radiologic software helps prevent stress and burnout among imaging staff members. Fast and secure report sharing and collaboration capabilities help prevent stress and burnout, which are achieved by eliminating cumbersome processes like burning CDs and using complex login details. It all helps cut fatigue, preventing stress and burnout among imaging practitioners. Also, radiologic software provides smart analytic tools that help in managing patient caseloads in a radiology facility. This helps prevent excessive workloads, preventing fatigue, stress, and burnout.

Lastly, radiologic software plays a big role in cutting costs and maximizing profits in an imaging facility. By introducing convenient ways to access and review patient images and reports, radiologic software helps eliminate bottlenecks that cause delays and dissatisfaction among staff and patients. In turn, this helps cut costs associated with patient referral leakages, high staff turnover, and long turnaround times.

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!