October 31, 2014 — Syed F. Zaidi, M.D., president of Radiology Associates of Canton (RAC) and chief executive officer of RadHelp LLC announced his group, along with hospitalists at Aultman Hospital in Canton, Ohio have reduced patient length of stay (LOS) by three days for inpatients recommended for computed tomography (CT) biopsy.
Zaidi presented these results in his talk at the inaugural Montage User Group meeting at the University City Science Center in Philadelphia. Using Montage Search and Analytics, key performance indicators (KPIs) were discovered and patients were identified and tracked to assure timely and appropriate follow-up care. Use of this data and analysis allows a radiology clinical coordinator to facilitate a patient-centered imaging service, acting as a care manager for patients with positive findings on their CT examinations.
"We have entered into a co-management arrangement with Aultman Hospital through formal shared governance of the imaging service line," said Zaidi. "Central to this arrangement is a focus on the patient and we've jointly developed and agreed on the performance metrics for the radiology department and the radiologists that contribute to patient-centric care."
RAC serves Aultman Hospital and a residency program as well as three community hospitals and offsite locations with 25 radiologists performing 550,000 annual procedures. RAC's board of directors pursued this shared governance approach in an effort to change the paradigm of how they worked with their hospital partners given the shared challenges of the economic downturn; competition from regional and national entities and reimbursement cuts on both sides. Under co-management radiology groups can align themselves with their hospital partners under a risk-based, pay-for- performance structure.
Radiology's contribution to the reduction in LOS for these patients is manifested in a reduced time of diagnosis to biopsy procedure order from 71 to 29 hours; order to biopsy completion from 52 to 21 hours; and overall diagnosis to completion of procedure from 133 to 50 hours. Given this success, they are now using Montage Search and Analytics' capabilities for data mining and analysis to improve non-displaced hip fracture assessment in the elderly, osteoporotic patient population and analysis of CT angiography for the diagnosis of pulmonary embolism in the ED.
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April 23, 2024 
