Experts work with
medavis RIS

Technology Change with positive Consequences

Since October 2015 the team of the radiological center in North Berlin Tegel works with medavis RIS. Thomas Heim, doctor for radiology and radiotherapy, is glad that his workload has noticeably decreased. “Replacing our old, familiar imaging center management system that could not keep up with our work, was a huge challenge. If you have been working for almost 19 years with a system, you start from scratch.” Due to a reference visit to a colleague friend, Mr. Heim and his team were quickly convinced by the quality of medavis RIS and implemented the system change within a tight schedule. Although the work for the radiologists and his team remained the same in general, the technological support by medavis RIS is in two aspects completely different. Mr. Thomas Heim explains the central difference of the technical installation: “Where we had a collection of different programs before, that had to be installed and kept up to date on each workstation, we now work with a leading system that contains everything we need. The second aspect is that before each colleague completed his work according to their own habits – this is now a thing of the past.” All work processes have been standardised and consequently structured by the system. The change was made a little bit easier because the doctors used speech recognition in the past. The speech recognition on the basis of Nuance SpeechMagic is deeply integrated in medavis RIS and makes reporting therefore very comfortable.

Better Communication Makes Work Easier

“The medavis RIS opens up new possibilities for collaboration for us. Colleagues in training and those who want a second opinion can simply move their report to a defined worklist and get support from a colleague quickly. As functions such as scanning, printing, faxing, word processing and Speech Recognition now lie on a server, the colleagues always work with the most recent version. We also have less effort with supporting the software and we save licenses,” Mr. Heim describes the clear advantages of the new installation. “I am especially impressed with the quickly available statistics. If you are responsible for the economic efficiency of your imaging center, this is an enormous help for controlling. Another aspect in this context is the complete documentation of the work. As RIS strictly lays out which workflow step the colleagues have to take next, less is forgotten.” The automatic bank data import also makes the administrative work easier. Incoming payments and invoices are automatically assigned and is clearly visible in the system at all times which amounts are still open.

Reaching the Goal faster in a structured and paperless Way

The work in the imaging center is structured and paperless: Appointment scheduling, registration, examination, reporting, billing – all these tasks go from one digital worklist to another until everyone has done his part. Even sending the report is done digitally, only the patient receives his images in print. Thomas Heim explains: “Thanks to the complete digitalisation with the help of scanners I have all information available when I select a patient in RIS. I can edit a text document and at the same time view images of previous reports. The automatic implementation of external media – such as previous reports, third party reports, referral letters – is very valuable for my work. Mr. Heim and his colleagues need three to five minutes for creating a standard report. The patient can take their report with them when they leave the imaging center and at the same time, the report is sent directly to the referring physician. “We defined a standard and an urgent pool in the system. As all colleagues follow the same process, urgent reports can be quickly taken over from a colleague. Due to the structured processes in the system we became more flexible in the end.” The work also accelerated for the employees at the registration. Thanks to the telephony integration you can see the name of the caller and get information on their medical history, if the patient has been registered in the system. This speeds up appointment scheduling as requesting the spelling of a name is obsolete. The employee simply reads the details in the system to the patient for confirmation and corrects the details if necessary.

Successful Experience Exchange

The decision for medavis RIS was made after a reference visit at the imaging center of a colleague and friend. In this way, a realistic evaluation was possible for Mr. Heim and his team. The offer of the colleague to be available for questions, was also a reason for buying the new software. “It was our goal to have a stable system with more functionality, a secure database, a good and reliable hotline and a stable company with personnel resources at our side. Today we have reached this goal and I can only recommend colleagues annoyed with outdated programs to come visit us and get to know the system in order to decide which value an expert solution has for a growing imaging center,” Mr. Heim extends an invitation. He defined three questions that every imaging center owner should ask before a system switch:

1. Is the system secure?
2. Do the system and the provider fulfill my expectations?
3. Did the reference installation convince me?

“With medavis, we could answer each question with ‚Yes‘ and today we are a satisfied customer,” Mr. Heim concludes his recommendation.