Part VII: Exploring PACS Secrets -- Pre-RSNA edition

Nov 27, 2005

AuntMinnie.com presents the latest installment in a series by PACS consultant Michael J. Cannavo, who explores commonly accepted PACS theories and industry secrets your PACS vendor might not want you to know.

Every year people go to the RSNA with the intention of significantly narrowing down the number of PACS vendors they are looking at or to confirm that their PACS vendor of choice is indeed "the right choice" (with apologies to 1980's PACS vendor AT&T).

It also never fails that prospective buyers get stuck spending hours listening to long, drawn-out pitches that make a George Bush answer seem like it's being delivered by Speedy Gonzalez.

To make the most effective use of your limited and extremely valuable time at RSNA 2005, Image Management Consultants (IMC) has designed a PACS questionnaire that will help you keep vendors on the straight and narrow path, answering the questions you need to have answered instead of having them providing you with hours worth of unnecessary corporate hype and fluff, or showing you basic features and functionality that virtually every PACS network has. To view the questionnaire, click here.

About three-quarters of the questions should be answered before you even attend RSNA, with the balance -- primarily software-related questions -- shown to you and your team onsite. You should also have a RSNA behind-closed-doors discussion (with appropriate nondisclosures signed if/as necessary) to find out what the company's PACS road map looks like and how this impacts your long-term imaging and clinical patient record (CPR) strategy plans.

This has been a year of intense change and industry consolidation, more so than virtually any other. Big companies have been swallowed up by even bigger companies, while small companies have bought up others to become a bigger small company. Behind this all is hope that the dynamics behind the PACS decision-making process can be easily changed because of these moves.

In addition to these corporate moves, nearly everyone has promoted or at least addresses the consolidation of radiology and cardiology PACS as a single enterprise-wide imaging solution. We can talk technology until we're blue in the face but the reality is technology itself doesn't solve problems -- how you implement the technology is what solves problems. If you do it right, you are a hero; do it wrong and you are a goat.

People also make decisions based on information they are given. Get informed, objective information and you can make great decisions. Get the wrong information and it can have ramifications that last a lifetime.

PACS decisions aren't hard decisions if you have the right information, but you must seek the right information. Even getting all the right information doesn't necessarily guarantee the outcome will be as expected, only that the decision will be easier to make and hopefully will be based on fact. Just as all decisions involve a certain degree of luck, so to does this extend to PACS.

Also understand that while some decisions may be very hard to make, there is no such thing as a bad decision, just decisions that may provide you with unexpected outcomes. I know all about that.

Last year on Tuesday of RSNA I got a call on my cell that my 86-year-old dad, who had been in the hospital a few days prior for a fairly minor event, had taken a turn for the worse. For five very long days after arriving back home I armed myself with as much information as I could and made decisions on his behalf that I felt were the right ones, even as one system after another failed on him.

Five days later, the ultimate decision was made for us both by a much higher and greater power, and no more decisions needed to be made. Still, even though the outcome was what neither of us had expected nor desired, I had armed myself with as much information as possible and did the best job I could under the circumstances.

At this year's RSNA understand that all anyone can ask of you is to arm yourself with all the possible information you can gather and then make your decision. Also realize that even after doing the very best you can, sometimes the decisions you make may be overruled by a higher power as well.

Believe it or not that's OK. Just hold your head up high and know you did the best you could. That's all anyone can ask of you.

And if you happen to see me walking around on the floor of RSNA on Tuesday seemingly in a daze, know that my head will be held up high as well for I, too, have known what it's like to make some of life's hardest decisions.

See you in Chicago.

By Michael J. Cannavo
AuntMinnie.com contributing writer
November 28, 2005

Would you like the opportunity to meet the Michael Cannavo (a.k.a. the PACSman) and his counterpart the Dalai Lama of PACS (a.k.a. Dr. Sam Friedman)? If you're going to this year's RSNA meeting, you can! Just come by AuntMinnie.com's booth 4901 on Monday, November 28, anytime between 1 and 3 p.m.

Michael J. Cannavo is a leading PACS consultant and has authored nearly 300 articles on PACS technology in the past 15 years. He can be reached via e-mail at [email protected].

Cannavo's direct, straightforward approach may have caused him to lose the race for this year's Dale Carnegie "How to Win Friends and Influence People" award, but he hopes that this series has shown PACS in a different light, and provided him with a modicum of respect for honesty and integrity in an industry where these values seem to have become a rare commodity.

The comments and observations expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the opinions of AuntMinnie.com, nor should they be construed as an endorsement or admonishment of any particular vendor, analyst, industry consultant, or consulting group. Rather, they should be taken as the personal observations of a guy who has, by his own account, been in this industry way too long.

Part V: Exploring PACS Secrets -- Buyers and Sellers, December 16, 2004

The 2004 PACSman Awards, December 1, 2004

Part IV: Exploring PACS secrets -- RSNA edition, November 18, 2004

Part III: Exploring PACS secrets, September 17, 2004