Post on 15-Aug-2020
transcript
REVOLUTIONIZING THE WAY PATIENTINFORMATION IS TRANSFERRED.
www.medicom.us
MEDICOM
Exchanging medical images is an important process in the continuum of a patient’s care. Without effective bi-directional image exchange, patients are often subject to repeat exams, delays in care, and operational inefficiencies.
With rising costs and waning reimbursements, it is no longer sustainable to repeat exams due to inaccessible prior images. In addition, repeat exams leave patients frustrated and exposed to excess radiation. Medicom is working to untangle these challenges by serving the medical community with new, innovative software technology.
By providing immediate access to diagnostic images and reports at all points of care, Medicom helps providers focus on patients. Medicom operates efficiently and is accessible to providers, referrers, patients, and health systems.
Medicom is years ahead of the solutions in today’s marketplace: CD-ROMs require handling physical media, VPNs are difficult to maintain, and cloud solutions require creating an expensive unnecessary copy of images in a potentially vulnerable environment.
Medicom’s peer-to-peer design makes it easy to move diagnostic images and reports, thereby, lowering cost and increasing throughput where it means adding value to care.
Medicom is leading the way towards reducing cost and increasing the quality of care by introducing new, innovative technologies.
MEDICOM’S VISION
MEDICOM IS REVOLUTIONIZING THE WAY IN WHICH PATIENT INFORMATION IS EXCHANGED.
RON CORNETT, DIRECTOR OF IT
RADIOLOGY LTD. TUCSON, ARIZONA
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LOWER COST AND IMPROVE CARE WITH MEDICOM.
Medicom makes electronic access to images and reports easy for patients, providers, and outside facilities, there-by reducing expenses and improving care.
MEDICOM’S STANDARDS
SECURITY
Bypass the risks associated with the cloud.
EFFICIENCY
Access your network from within PACS.
COST EFFECTIVENESS
Access prior images and prevent exam duplication.
CONSIDER THE COST TO THE U.S. HEALTH CARE SYSTEMAccording to the American College of Radiology, the average cost of
burning, shipping, and handling a CD-ROM is $15.
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HIPAA COMPLIANCE
Connect to partners without a BAA.
400M (scans/year)
x 10% (exams duplicated)
x $290 (average cost/scan)
+ 34M (CDs burned/year)
x $15.00 (total cost of CDs)
= (potential for US savings)
$12.1 BILLION
MEDICOM’S STANDARDS
SECURITY
Traditional methods for sharing diagnostic images put patients’ privacy at risk. CD-ROMs can easily end up in the wrong hands. VPNs open vulnerabilities in networks and have limited audit trails. Cloud solutions create a second copy of images on multi-tenant third party servers.
In the wake of new and unexpected data breaches, moving towards smarter more secure solutions is a must. Unlike existing solutions, Medicom does not hold or retain any imaging exams. In addition, Medicom initiates a new public private key exchange for every study exchanged.
HIPAA COMPLIANCE
Medicom is designated as a non-covered entity under HIPAA and HITECH rules (45 CFR 160.103). Medicom’s data transfer protocol exceeds HIPAA and HITECH requirements for ePHI, allowing users to be compliant with applicable rules (45 CFR 160.302-.318). Per the Omnibus Final Rule Conduit Exception (45 CFR 160.103 a.i), Medicom does not require a BAA to operate, as Medicom does not regularly access ePHI. While a BAA is not legally required, Medicom will sign a BAA at its clients’ discretion.
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EFFICIENCY
As patients transition from one provider to another in their evolution of care, CD -ROMs with images often follow them around. Waiting for a CD in the mail is the norm. Medicom makes it possible to access a patient’s entire imaging history with one click. Medicom operates in real time, reducing the wait time for prior images from days to seconds.
COST EFFECTIVENESS
In order to increase the value of care delivered, independent data silos need to be connected in a scalable and cost-effective manner. Medicom’s peer-to-peer network not only operates economically but also drastically reduces the need to duplicate images.
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Imagex
Medicom’s Imagex is a peer-to-peer network for diagnostic image exchange capable of sharing images directly from one picture archiving communication system (PACS) to another. Medicom is also capable of sharing images with patients or out of network providers over Patient Link.
Endpoint
Endpoint is a web archive and viewer for specialists and surgeons that do not have their own PACS, giving them control of their patients’ imaging — the web viewer is available anytime anywhere, and integrates seamlessly with EMRs.
SOLUTIONS
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Access code: 1KMW-KK00-88QV-B8ZT
Instructions for use:
1. Navigate to https://medicom.us/patient-link2. If you don’t have an account, enter the above access code and your date of birth.3. If you have an account, sign in with your email and password. Select Retrieve exams > With code, then enter the above access code and your date of birth.
Included exams:
Patient
JOHN DOEPatient ID: 9875321 DOB: 9/16/1900
XRAY UE AC JOINT BILATStudy Date: 11/21/2008Accession: 7453628
JOHN DOEPatient ID: 9875321 DOB: 9/16/1900
CT CHST ABD PELVIS ANGIO W IVCONStudy Date: 10/11/2012Accession: 74935108
JOHN DOEPatient ID: 9875321 DOB: 9/16/1900
MR LE THIGH WO IVCONStudy Date: 6/15/2005Accession: 916483521
JOHN DOEPatient ID: 9875321 DOB: 9/16/1900
CT EYES TO THIGHSStudy Date: 1/19/2002Accession: 0274982
JOHN DOEPatient ID: 9875321 DOB: 9/16/1900
MR LE ANKLE LTStudy Date: 5/8/1995Accession: 629462827
Exam
Patient Link
Patient Link
Patient Link gives patients easy access to their complete imaging history — no need for additional usernames and passwords.
Radiology staff can hand out patient access codes instead of CDs, or Medicom can integrate
Patient Link directly into existing patient portals. Patients can view and share their
images with any provider over Imagex, fax, secure email, and more.
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Medicom works diligently to develop soft ware systems that integrate seamlessly and quickly with the medical community, patients, and existing information and network assets.
Since Medicom acts purely as a conduit for sharing medical images and reports, Medicom’s Outreach Team can quickly setup a network of participating partners — driving instant value for patients and providers, while boosting radiology profits.
Under the conduit exception of the Omnibus Rule, Medicom is not a covered entity.
What does this mean?
Providers can start sending and receiving medical images over Medicom with their partners under healthcare operations’ continuity of care, hereby, eliminating the need to put a BAA in place. This accelerates network utilization, which drives down costs, improves care, and increases throughput. However, Medicom is happy to execute a BAA when requested.
Medicom is easy to implement in most medical facilities — Medicom runs a service on a workstation or VM and uses DICOM to communicate with PACS. In addition, Medicom’s point and click HL7 setup makes adding reports and interfaces easy. Medicom is simple to install and runs in the background so that staff can maintain their workflow in PACS. Medicom runs its hands-free Windows Service on VMs that service thousands of facilities around the country.
IMPLEMENTATION
LegendInnovators
Early Adopters
MajorityIn Process
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LegendInnovators
Early Adopters
Majority
In Process
Example community that implemented Medicom over the course of a year.
Patients first: Patients are ready to share their medical images with their providers and their family electronically. Independent research shows that 91% of patients prefer electronic access codes to CD-ROMs.
As patients begin to access and share their images electronically, providers in the community accelerate care by receiving a direct link to their patients’ images.
IMPLEMENTATION
In the meantime, Medicom’s Outreach Team works to connect facilities that share inbound and outbound images independent of patient portals.
Medicom’s Outreach Team carefully monitors the electronic transfer process, and helps physicians, hospitals, and specialty groups, receiving the most access codes, become a spoke on the Medicom network. That way providers can retrieve prior images directly to their imaging archive, in real time.
Once, the network is established, Endpoint can be added to optimize remote viewing capabilities for providers and key stakeholders.
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MEDICOM HAS DEVELOPED AN IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGY WITH PROVEN RESULTS.
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CASE STUDY
Introduction
Arizona Oncology, one of the largest medical groups in Arizona, set out to resolve the diff iculties associated with image sharing including: obtaining prior images more rapidly and more consistently, providing images performed at Arizona Oncology to other facilities for continuity of care, and facilitating electronic access to patient’s exams.
Arizona Oncology has two imaging centers in Southern Arizona with PET/CT scanners that perform about 37 scans each per day.
Through late 2015, nearly all image sharing at Arizona Oncology occurred through the use of CDs. However, using CDs presented multiple challenges. CDs typically took days to reach their destination. Arizona Oncology techs were typically working 1 to 2 hours of overtime daily to burn discs, ingest studies sent from outside facilities, and manage the protected health information on the CDs, as they posed a HIPAA security risk to the practice and the patient.
Arizona Oncology’s goals were to accelerate image sharing in order to improve patient care, reduce the cost of image sharing, and reduce HIPAA security risk.
Electronic Image Sharing
To address these issues, Arizona Oncology set out to use Medicom’s Imagex Network to exchange images with two far-reaching radiology groups in the community. This use-case grew organically to a much broader network including a majority of the hospitals, radiology centers, and specialty practices with imaging in the area.
Network Utilization
The number of images sent via Imagex grew exponentially in 2016 and continued to grow in 2017. The growth directly correlates with the increased number of centers using Imagex.
Technologist Overtime
A sum of tech overtime hours tallied from 2015 to 2017 did not reveal a significant reduction in time. To understand why, the techs were interviewed. One tech explained, “I love Medicom. Before Imagex it used to take hours to deal with all the CDs. I can now do the same work in minutes.” The techs’ overtime is now spent scanning additional patients.
Impact on Finances
Medicom made it possible for techs to scan 6.0% more patients in 2016 than in 2015. The additional scans translated into a 6.8% improvement in profitability. Arizona Oncology’s goal to reduce costs and risks associated with image sharing was accomplished by implementing Medicom. Furthermore, the techs were available to care for additional patients, improving patient and doctor satisfaction, as well as profitability.
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INCREASE IN PROFITABILITY
6.8 %
I love Medicom. Be-fore Imagex it used to take hours to deal with all the CD’s. I can now do the same work in minutes.
ARIZONA ONCOLOGY’S
GOALSIMPROVE
PROFITABILITY
REDUCE HIPAA RISK
EXPEDITE CARE
TECHNOLOGIST OVERTIME
0
175
350
525
700
2015 2016 Annualized 2017
NETWORK UTILIZATION
0
1,750
3,500
5,250
7,000
2014 2015 2016 2017
CDs Medicom Total Scans
INCREASE IN PATIENTS SCANNED FROM 2015 TO 2016
6 %
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MEDICOM TECHNOLOGIES, INC
434 Fayeteville Street Suite 1650Raleigh, NC, 27601P : (844) 686-9599W : www.medicom.us
Frustrated by the expense, unreliability, and lack of Mac compatibility, I began my search to replace CD’s in our imaging center. The compact disc is now a very old technology.
I spoke to several vendors, some were new start-up companies and some were large PACS vendors. All of these solutions required a great amount of up front expense, and none of them were the least bit impressive.
I discovered Medicom at RSNA this past year in Chicago. Aft er talking at great length with their representatives I am happy to say that, although it has taken 3 years, we now have the perfect solution to our image distribution needs.
David EddsDirector of Medical ImagingMichigan Institute for Neurological Disorders