Why PACS? Why now?

Why PACS? Why now?


Jackson-Madison County General Hospital had 150,000 reasons to implement a PACS and they all came down to one business imperative - improving service to patients and referring physicians.

"We were doing 150,000 radiology procedures a year under one roof," says Charlotte Brummett, director of the hospital's new imaging center. "We had simply run out of room and our equipment was over 15 years old. The staff was frustrated because they couldn't provide the quality of care they wanted to."

The decision to build a free-standing imaging center with state-of-the-art radiology equipment led Jackson General to consider PACS.

"The imaging center really expedited our PACS decision-making process," says PACS Administrator Ken Hollis. "Our workload was increasing. We had inpatients on top of outpatients. We decided that the new imaging center had to be filmless to handle the workflow."

Benefits

Efficiency

Efficiency

Efficiency is critical for Jackson General, the only full-service hospital between Memphis and Nashville. Three issues dominated the hospital's PACS planning:

  • Improve service to patients and referring physicians
  • Eliminate lost films and improve file room operation
  • Enable the hospital to "do more with less"


"Time is the key to PACS - the real deliverable," says CIO Jeff Frieling. "Time for the patient, because they don't want to wait. Time for the physicians, because that's all they have to sell. The more efficient we are, the more time we can give to everyone."