ScImage Delivers Workflow, Clinical Productivity Tools to Coffee Health Group

Located in Florence, AL, Eliza Coffee Memorial Hospital is owned and operated by the not-for-profit healthcare system Coffee Health Group (CHG). Nationally recognized as one of the Thomson Top 100 Hospitals for the third year in a row, the hospital is part of a healthcare system dedicated to serving the people of Northwest Alabama. In addition to Eliza Coffee Memorial Hospital in Florence, there is also Shoals Hospital in Muscle Shoals and ECM East Diagnostic and Business Center, as well as several medical office complexes that fall under the CHG umbrella. CHG offers a comprehensive range of healthcare services and programs to meet the needs of its patients. Dedicated not only to the treatment of disease and injury but also to prevention, this multi-facility health system routinely participates in programs designed to make its community a healthier and safer place to live. In support of this goal, CHG recently embarked on an evaluation of PACS technologies. Members of the cardiology and radiology departments at each CHG facility, along with the IT staff that supports them, assembled a task force to assess short and long term goals and to review solutions from a number of software developers. Goals were defined that specified a tightly integrated solution that would span all facilities and deliver discipline-specific tools to caregivers in each department and facility. The solution also needed to address the needs of referring physicians by delivering patient information to them when and where they need it. In the end, CHG selected Los Altos, California-based ScImage for their Web-based enterprisewide, multidiscipline PACS solution: PicomEnterprise.
The comprehensive solution delivered by ScImage provides workflow and clinical productivity tools for multiple specialties, including cardiology and radiology at Eliza Coffee Memorial Hospital and Shoals Hospital and at their multispecialty rural health clinic, ECM East Diagnostic and Rehabilitation Center. It also provides access for referring physicians to facilitate the high standard of patient care for which Eliza Coffee Memorial Hospital has become recognized.
Importantly, installation of the PicomEnterprise solution, in all three facilities, was completed in about two weeks with minimal disruption to existing workflow protocols. The new solution delivers clinical productivity tools for multiple disciplines at each facility. Workflow is being facilitated by a tight integration with the each of the sites’ existing information and patient management systems.
ScImage’s installation team accelerated the timeline for PACS implementation to ensure that Eliza Coffee’s new 64-slice CT could be utilized beginning the day installation of that device was completed. In addition to the thin-slice CT modality, ScImage is enabling the facilities to gather data generated by cardiac Ccath, echocardiography, ECG, MR and standard radiography to ensure the digital workflow goals set by CHG are met in a comprehensive way.
The installation is comprised of a main server, a mirrored server for redundancy, a test server and five intermediate gateways. This combination of hardware, ScImage’s enterprise PACS and a deep HL7 integration with the institution’s patient information system will provide a comprehensive digital workflow that spans three facilities and two cities in northern Alabama. It is currently estimated that more than 300 physicians, technicians and administrators have secure access to image exams from any of CHG’s healthcare facilities.
The selection committee’s ultimate goal of putting patient information into the hands of care givers when and where they need to provide the best possible patient care has been successfully accomplished. According to Philip Birt, PACS Administrator of CHG, “The solution has met and exceeded our goals. The completion of the primary installation and interface work was on time, and our physicians in cardiology, radiology and our outpatient care facility are extremely satisfied with the performance of the solution.”