More than 6,400 care facilities of all sizes have made PowerShare the largest image-sharing network in the country. Many choose PowerShare because of its impact in everyday, ordinary usage – thanks to its size, reliability, ease of use and 24/7 support. But it’s in those extraordinary or potentially life-threatening circumstances -- when time and speed of access matter most --- that they discover PowerShare’s greatest strength is in fostering positive patient outcomes. Here are a few real-world examples.
In my last blog entry, I shared how care facilities of all sizes have made the Nuance PowerShare Network the largest image-sharing network in America. The network has even grown since then and now serves more than 6,400 facilities spanning nearly 25,000 physicians and more than 26,000 patients exchanging almost 1.5 million studies each month. It’s a turnkey, scalable and EMR-integrated solution that helps providers #DitchTheDisk and improve patient experiences unfettered by institutional walls and geography.
PowerShare Network reliably delivers those benefits in day-to-day, ordinary usage and during challenging, unanticipated or potentially life-threatening circumstances when its size and ease-of-use are critical for positive patient outcomes. Here are a few ordinary and extraordinary examples of the PowerShare Network in action:
Children’s of Alabama: PowerShare eliminated hundreds of unreadable CDs that disrupted workflows, delayed care and required rescanning of young patients at the third-largest pediatric medical facility in the U.S. and the only Level I pediatric trauma facility in Alabama. PowerShare was especially valuable for surgeons who gained time to evaluate cases and prepare care teams before a patient arrives.
WellStar Health System: The ability to send images via PowerShare directly from the PACS for viewing within minutes has improved healthcare experiences and access to specialist care for patients served by Georgia’s largest health system. Rapid image-sharing can help quickly determine if stroke patients in areas without neurologists require a consult, medication, or transfer. Mammography patients also receive the results of their latest exams more quickly, including much larger, data-intensive 3D mammograms.
Orlando Health: PowerShare has eliminated time-wasting CDs and given more than 2,200 physicians real-time, mobile access to images. Orlando Health first implemented PowerShare after several frustrating efforts to build its own network. The health system subsequently wanted to give physicians the ability to look at echo and moving image studies on mobile devices and at home. The Nuance PowerShare team made that happen within 45 days.
Great Plains Health: A patient of the Nebraska health system urgently needed an imaging exam to have a custom prosthetic built and schedule surgery before an imminent insurance deadline. The care team used the PowerShare Network to route the images to the prosthetics builder within an hour of the exam and quickly completed the entire process. It would have added at least two days and possibly complicated insurance coverage if they had to ship CDs.
Indiana University Health (IUH): A community hospital initiated the transfer of a woman to IUH’s Methodist Hospital Level I Trauma Center 45 minutes away in Indianapolis after an abdominal CT indicated serious injuries suffered in a fall from a moving vehicle. With the ambulance en route, the local facility sent the images to IUH via PowerShare. The IUH trauma team quickly determined that the woman had active bleeding in her spleen and alerted the interventional radiology team. The IR suite was prepared and ready when the patient arrived.
Holmes Regional Medical Center, Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children and Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women & Babies: Baby Christian began vomiting a day after full-term delivery at Holmes Regional in Melbourne, FL. An abdominal X-ray indicated an emergency requiring the pediatric trauma resources at Arnold Palmer Hospital more than 70 miles away in Orlando. Holmes Regional sent baby Christian’s X-ray via PowerShare to Arnold Palmer Hospital where the pediatric surgeon viewed it on his iPad and ordered an upper GI scan. Holmes Regional completed and sent the scan to the surgeon who accessed the images from his car and sent them to colleagues at the adjacent Winnie Palmer Hospital. Baby Christian arrived via medical helicopter and was rushed directly to the fully prepped OR at Winnie Palmer Hospital.
The PowerShare Network is a linchpin of our comprehensive diagnostic solutions – providing not only an image-sharing vehicle but also providing a robust platform that supports the key components of the end-to-end radiology workflow. Its large and robust infrastructure enables us to deliver value at scale from the moment a customer joins. But in the end, the most important reason why customers choose it and then recruit their own healthcare partners to join is the impact that PowerShare has on care quality, physician satisfaction and patient outcomes every single day.
For us, the thought of a young, happy, healthy boy named Christian about to begin his first day of elementary school is one of the best reminders of that fact.
A Real View is a Q&A blog series with Karen Holzberger, Vice President and General Manager of Nuance Healthcare’s Diagnostic Division. The Real View cuts through the hype and gets to what’s real, here, and now. The blog series features interviews and insights from health IT movers and shakers – and uncovers disruptive technologies that solve challenges, optimize workflow, and increase efficiencies to improve patient care.