The Situation
Family Medicine Center is located in the Bahamas with offices in Nassau and Eleuthera, Its mission is to be a one-stop shop for all family health concerns supporting the health of individuals and their families through comprehensive management, caring communication and timely appointments. Family Medicine Center houses about 85 employees and their modalities include X-ray, Ultrasound, Bone Density, Echocardiogram, and Mammography. The radiology department has an average of 400 cases per month.
Prior to installation of the Candelis system, Family Medicine Center had a very tedious, manually reliant workflow. The radiologists would have to transcribe their own reports (using a Microsoft Word document) and would then email the report to the Radiology Department Supervisor for classification and finalization, creating a cumbersome workload. Additionally, their previous PACS was primarily used for storage, but was not fully sufficient as it could not store certain studies, such as mammography and tomosynthesis images, and was not used for routing patient images.
The Opportunity
When Family Medicine Center was searching for a PACS replacement, Candelis’ ImageGrid solution was recommended due to Candelis’ superb reputation as a manufacturer of powerhouse PACS systems with competitive pricing.
In addition to fixing the limitation that their previous PACS could not store mammograms and tomosynthesis images, Family Medicine Center needed a PACS that could support modalities from multiple vendors, including an Echocardiogram from GE, mammography gantries from Hologic, and portable ultrasound machines from other vendors. It was imperative that their new PACS provide seamless connectivity amongst all the various vendor image acquisition systems.
Family Medicine Center also wanted their new PACS to be reliable, easy-to use, as well as technologically advanced, with features such as:
- Radiologists could easily view and diagnose their mammography studies (including 3D mammography studies) and annotate and make notes directly on the PACS system
- Reliably prefetch and routing of mammography studies
- Allow multiple technologists to be logged into the workstation simultaneously while working from multiple facilities
- Easily store images from any acquisition modality, regardless of the image’s size, without negatively affecting the center’s workflow
The Solution
Based on the volume of patient data acquired, Family Medicine Center opted for a Candelis ImageGrid system with 11TB RAID storage server, several general and advanced viewers, and multiple radiology reporting software licenses, in order to provide a robust and, efficient PACS for their facility.
Family Medicine Center also purchased ASTRA Cloud Storage for back-up of their patient studies, and ASTRA Distribution. ASTRA Distribution provides referring physicians with a zero-footprint viewer for remote viewing of medical images and reports of studies stored on the ASTRA Cloud.
With the Candelis system in place, radiologists throughout the Family Medicine Center’s facilities are now able to diagnose patients and report results directly on the ImageGrid PACS. This provides a more efficient reading and reporting solution.
“The Candelis system has been a game changer for our facility. Now with our new Candelis server, we have eliminated that extra step of searching through emails for the radiology reports before they can be finalized and delivered, saving valuable time, and minimizing error,” said Melanie Obregon, MSc., Radiology Technician and Radiology Department Supervisor.
The ImageGrid PACS also allows Family Medicine Center access to better image management. “I love [our Candelis ImageGrid’s] storage capacity, the resolution quality and the availability to compare previous studies,” added Obregon.
The Results
The partnership with Candelis has produced an efficient PACS solution and allowed Family Medicine Center to achieve their goal of providing a more convenient and higher quality care for patients.
"Choosing a Candelis system was one of the best decisions we made to update our technological prowess and speed, increase our time efficiency, and in return, optimize our healthcare for all of our patients,” says Obregon.
