Hemet Global Medical Center accelerates patient care with PowerShare
PowerShare Image Sharing enables faster, more efficient image sharing and exchange for better patient care.
Seamless image sharing
Learn how Hemet Global Medical Center uses PowerShare Image Sharing to overcome delays in patient care and to make image sharing efficient, secure, and safe.
Challenge
- Overcome delays in patient care and transfer related to image sharing
- Create a safer, more secure process for medical image exchange
Solution
PowerShare Image Sharing
Results
- Alleviated burden of processing physical media
- Faster, more efficient image sharing makes patient transfers and follow‑up visits seamless
Background
Hemet Global Medical Center takes great pride in providing excellent healthcare; they want every patient they meet to enjoy life in great health. It’s a commitment borne out, in part, through comprehensive diagnostic imaging services, which are supported by a range of Nuance Healthcare solutions. These solutions include PowerShare, a cloud‑based network that connects healthcare facilities, providers, and patients for quick, secure sharing of medical images and diagnostic reports.
According to Gene Reiver, RIS/PACS Administrator, Hemet Global Medical Center has been a Nuance customer for a number of years and added PowerShare to their portfolio in 2019 to exchange imaging among providers and between healthcare facilities without the burden of burning CDs and other physical media. Reiver says, “When we need to transfer a patient, the providers first want to see any recent imaging we’ve taken so they can determine if their care is going to be safe and effective.”
Inefficient image sharing creates delays in patient care
Before PowerShare, a patient would sometimes be transported with their imaging CD that turned out to be unreadable, or worse yet, without their imaging at all. In those cases, Reiver explains, “The providers would have to repeat the imaging sequences, and from a safety perspective, we don’t like to re‑radiate people.” Sometimes patients need to move between facilities urgently, as was the case with a pediatric patient who needed to move from Hemet to a nearby children’s hospital. “The surgeon there needed to see the brain CT to verify that they could treat this child, but we had no way of getting the study to him quickly,” he notes. Eventually, Reiver had to text a photo of the images (cropping out the patient’s PHI in the process) to the surgeon before moving forward with the transfer.
In another case, an orthopedic surgeon at a receiving facility drove to Hemet to pick up a patient’s study so she could review the case to determine if a particular bone fracture repair was possible. While these patient outcomes were positive, the staff’s extraneous effort and delay in time to treat are both unnecessary and avoidable.
PowerShare enables healthcare providers to work in near real‑time
Now, with PowerShare, the process of image sharing is seamless. As Reiver says, “If the receiving facility calls us to get the patient’s images, it’s no problem. We can use the PowerShare platform to set them up as an instant end‑user, and they can have the images in just five to ten minutes.” There have been many cases where this particular workflow has proven to be especially important. Reiver mentions one patient who left the Hemet facility in California to have a follow‑up visit in another state. His provider there was able to receive the study via PowerShare within five minutes, without having to wait on CDs to be created, picked up, or mailed.
Creating more efficient, safer workflows for all stakeholders
Today, Hemet Global Medical Center continues to build its network of healthcare partners and providers within PowerShare because it creates opportunities to improve patient care. And with the COVID‑19 pandemic still affecting healthcare organizations, Reiver notes that it’s simply a safer solution. “Before the pandemic, people would come into the hospital to sign out their CDs, but now we aren’t allowing people without appointments to come into our facility. With PowerShare, sharing images is all electronic, which not only is much faster—just one or two minutes to retrieve the images—it’s safer for everyone.”
As he looks at the technology roadmap, Reiver says Hemet Global Medical Center is expanding PowerShare Network access beyond the radiology department to the unit secretaries. “These are the people who know when patient transfers are imminent, so we’re saving them the trouble accessing the PACS, burning CDs, and leaving the floor to get images to the right people.” He concludes: “If you’re considering a digital image exchange solution, get started as soon as you can. PowerShare is hands-down the way to go here.”