subject: Use Chiropractic Pacs For Improved Workflow [print this page] Every medical office has dozens of routine tasks that are repeated throughout the work day. These include those having to do with digital medical image capturing, viewing, distributing and archiving of the digital images. The chiropractic office is no exception, but with a chiropractic digital x-ray system in place that utilizes the latest chiropractic PACS features, many of the repetitive tasks can be handled by the digital equipment, making your work day more efficient and saving you time.
In terms of chiropractic x-rays, physicians may select from chiropractic CR or chiropractic DR imaging systems. CR systems can be scaled to fit any size medical facility, including chiropractic offices. It is the most cost-efficient system for obtaining digital medical images in the dicom medical imaging format. DR systems cost a bit more, but they also offer a higher resolution quality. Both imaging systems can be used in mobile units as well. When these units are compared to all the work involved with taking film images, it is quickly apparent that the time savings are tremendous with digital medical imaging.
Once the medical images are captured in dicom format, they can be sent from the imaging equipment to your pacs appliance. With the pacs, you can view, send, receive and archive the dicom images. With a film image, no changes to the image could be made, so if the image was not a good one, it meant having to bring the patient back in for more x-rays. Now with digital imaging, many enhancements to the dicom images can be handled directly from a personal computer, resulting in better patient care.
If your workstations are online you can send and receive dicom images in a matter of seconds, rather than wait for images to arrive via postal mail. Storage of film images meant having actual rooms of storage space, as well as personnel, to handle labeling and filing of the medical images, but with today's modern digital imaging systems you can save dicom images directly to CD or DVD, or even route them to an off-site server for long-term storage as well as safety in the event of a disaster.
A chiropractic PACS system can aid you in your workday by handling many routine tasks for you. You can set the software system to pre-fetch certain patient dicom records, and the system can also automatically store and save the dicom images as well. To fully optimize your system, you can add a RIS component to the PACS, so that documents such as reports and billing can be saved and worked with in the dicom format. Digital imaging systems such as these will eliminate the need for repetitive jobs that occur at a busy chiropractic office and help your day run more smoothly.
