Image courtesy of Philips Healthcare
November 17, 2015 — Philips announced its collaboration with UCHealth, an integrated delivery network of five hospitals in Colorado and more than 100 ambulatory locations across three states, to consolidate and standardize UCHealth’s electronic health records (EHR), voice recognition systems and PACS onto specialized platforms for radiology and cardiology. As a result of the migration to Philips IntelliSpace PACS (picture archiving and communication system) for radiology and Xcelera for cardiology, UCHealth projects a five-year savings of $11.1 million, as well as improved workflow efficiencies, ready access to images for enhanced patient care, and a flexible and nimble structure poised to seamlessly connect with additional technologies.
UCHealth saw rapid growth as part of a merger in 2012 and with it came an array of legacy PACS systems; the new UCHealth system had three radiology PACS and four cardiology PACS. Realizing that IT integration could result in cost-savings, workflow efficiencies and improved patient care, UCHealth is now utilizing Philips to consolidate and standardize its health IT systems across the entire hospital enterprise.
“From a health system perspective, any patient should be able to get identical, high-quality, standardized care any place in the system – and PACS is part of that,” said Peter Sachs, M.D., associate professor of radiology, University of Colorado School of Medicine, section chief of cardiothoracic imaging and vice chair of informatics, Department of Radiology, and radiology physician informaticist, UCHealth. “Standardizing imaging protocols, workflow, and the structure and content of reports is essential, as is making sure clinicians can see prior studies and historical records.”
With 6 million radiology images and 30,000 cardiology studies already migrated on to IntelliSpace PACS and Xcelera, radiologists and cardiologists at UCHealth can view a patient’s prior images as well as new studies on a single patient timeline, regardless of where those images were acquired within the UCHealth system. As a result of working with Philips to consolidate PACS, UCHealth estimates a savings of $6.5 million in the first five years in radiology and $4.6 million in cardiology, due to reduced software and associated maintenance costs.
UCHealth will also soon migrate to Philips IntelliSpace Cardiovascular and has plans to include visible light images in the IntelliSpace PACS, mobility initiatives and advanced visualization via the IntelliSpace Portal.
Philips will showcase IntelliSpace PACS and its full portfolio of integrated radiology solutions at the 2015 Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) annual meeting, Nov. 29 - Dec. 4 in Chicago.
For more information: www.philips.com
May 15, 2024 
