Dear AuntMinnie Member,
The patient is taking center stage in today's healthcare environment, and in response, IT professionals are increasingly focusing on ways to cater to their needs in ways that benefit the provider organization as a whole, according to a new article from this week's Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) meeting in Chicago.
IT areas receiving the lion's share of attention this past year included patient privacy and security and changing payment and insurance models, according to Senior Editor Erik L. Ridley, who is on hand in Chicago to report on the HIMSS proceedings. What else is keeping IT professionals busy these days? Click here to find out, and visit our Imaging Informatics Community for more news from HIMSS 2015.
Teleradiology has become a critical tool for sharing scarce radiologist resources, especially in rural areas where specialists are few and far between. But teleradiology can complicate the delivery of operator-dependent exams such as ultrasound, according to a new study from France, where a physician trained in sonography must be present during the exam. While emergency ultrasound requests kept pouring in after the hospital adopted teleradiology, the facility used a variety of workaround techniques. Learn more by clicking here or visiting the Ultrasound Community.
Finally, is myocardial perfusion SPECT finding lots of blocked coronary arteries that are actually patent? A new study found that about half of all SPECT-positive patients were negative at coronary CT angiography, a test long known for its stellar negative predictive value. Is there more to the story than just positive or negative? Of course there is, and you'll find it here or by visiting our CT Community.
