Recently, KLAS Research hosted their annual invite only Keystone Summit surrounding Enterprise Medical Imaging solutions.. The goal? To improve the success with which enterprise imaging solutions are deployed and adopted. A group of 24 executives from healthcare provider organizations and 10 enterprise imaging vendors met for the exclusive work day at Snowbird, Utah. In the sea of noise about healthcare technology Utah has been quietly innovating and improving outcomes. I was honored to be able to attend and see the results of their hard work.
Healthcare innovation needs voices that move out of the echo chamber and collaborate. We need more makers and quality information across measurement. Consistent messaging between large healthcare organizations as well as between vendors and providers improves outcomes for enterprise imaging.
Adam Gale of KLAS shared his personal experiences leading youth in a pioneer trek during his remarks to the group and likened it to leading this market. Prior to the conference, Adam went as a leader for youth to travel some of the trails that early settlers of Utah followed. These settlers are called “The Pioneers” and the experience of a short pilgrimage can help today’s over connected and digital youth understand to a small degree, what past generations experienced in walking through Wyoming.
Adam Gale told of his experience: “I spent several unique days last week on the plains of Wyoming with about 400 young people. The goal was to instill in them an appreciation for the legacy that comes from these early pioneers. You can imagine the enthusiasm of these youth switching from video games to handcarts. We had a lot of fun, but there were also some reverent moments when we walked by the gravesites of those that died on the trail. It was a touching moment for these young individuals to see the sacrifices of those who had come before them, and for them to take inspiration from the dead to move forward in life”
This personalized vision of in the midst of sensationalized health stories about predicting death and shiny technology, we are charged with caring for people’s lives. There are solutions that save lives, and for many patients access to images across providers allows them to get critical medical care.
Adam Gale went on to mention Mark Twain’s quote:
“Do the right thing. It will gratify some and astonish the rest.”
Leaders from the KLAS summit met together to outline what that “right thing” looks like and create a way to measure if Enterprise imaging was on track, and how to get on track. Current and expected functionality was outlined for five areas, including: Capture, Storage, Viewing, Interoperability and Analytics. They also outlined common delivery and implementation failures and Executive Recommendations.
Enterprise Imaging is a vital part of healthcare delivery and care and often doesn’t translate well between hospital systems or between providers. Don Woodstock, VP and GM of enterprise imaging for GE Healthcare, spoke about this vision of patient centered care and the collaborative effort:
“Images are an absolutely vital component of patient-centered care. Providing every physician and caregiver that full comprehensive view of the patient to feed into their diagnostic and treatment decisions is so important but to date has been challenged. This collective effort with KLAS, leading providers, and the major imaging vendors is leading the way for us to realize this vision.”
One of the complexities surrounding enterprise imaging is that each healthcare system is personalized. Richard Wiggins MD, is the Director of Imaging Informatics for the University of Utah Health Science Center and directs the Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine. I spoke with him about some of the important aspects of Imaging Informatics as a field and developing a structure for enterprise imaging. Diversity of workflow in each health care system makes a one sized fits all enterprise imaging strategy untenable. He spoke about his experience working with the University of Utah:
“The University of Utah started incorporating visible light images for Enterprise imaging (EI) into our PACS in 2012. We believe that the PACS should be the repository for all digital imaging, not the EMR. Initially there was the usual issue of changing the mindset from individual silos of data to an enterprise imaging strategy for UUHSC. Usually institutional imaging strategies are focused on being an individual service line, the changes in governance take time and energy.
Radiology already has an established workflow for digital imaging, with the order, RIS interface (or EMR if integrated) which drives a modality worklist to allow the tech to identify the patient, then the image is created on the modality, and then the image is sent to PACS in an organized fashion with metadata that is searchable. An order is needed for this system because it provides a clear entry point and assignment of a unique ID with some contextual information, but there are other imaging workflows that require an encounter workflow running in parallel to the traditional radiology order workflow. We need this workflow to allow for mobile devices, since they are ubiquitous not only for the medical professional, but also for the patient, with authentication, security, and the ability to have an app iOS and Android that will allow for multiple high resolution images and video to be acquired in a fashion that they can easily be incorporated into PACS, possibly through the EMR, while the images or video is not stored permanently on the device.”
This collaborative patient centered event reviewed some of the challenges and successes which each stakeholder had with enterprise imaging. They also made official recommendations for leadership. These recommendations for provider leadership are a must read for healthcare executives responsible for understanding. The recommendations from the KLAS whitepaper are:
- Providers often fail to prepare enough for the deep commitment of an enterprise imaging journey. This preparation includes the investment of resources, personnel, and understanding. Organizations need to understand, prepare and commit that these deployments often take years.
- Providers often ask vendors for quotes without knowing what they want to accomplish as an organization. Providers need to do more work upfront and have alignment on the scope and goals. When the provider customers do not know what they want to accomplish, vendors are put into a box. How can a vendor provide a solution to customers who do not know what they want to solve?
- The views of clinical users must be included in an enterprise imaging strategy. The number of image users/viewers dwarfs the number of image producers, and if the systems are built only by the producers, we will miss the mark.
- The C-suite really needs to lead out with enterprise imaging, but today, enterprise imaging is regulated to a position of limited resources and alignment. That hurts the likelihood of success. The message of value to the c-suite is lacking today, and that is a challenge. Vendors and providers need to work together to educate c-suite leaders.
- Governance is difficult to set up because it takes a group of people who are willing to govern as well as a group of people who are willing to be governed. Leaders from many departments need to be drawn into this conversation. If a provider organization does not have multiple departments and specialties involved in the governance, they don’t have a true governance model, and the governance will die on the vine.
Without a strong leadership structure and clearly delineated roles, providers and hospital systems will resist even helpful change. Change has to be provider driven, not IT driven. The dedication of top leaders must be paired with end user buy in from physicians. The KLAS Keystone Summit had four provider leaders that collaborated before and during the June Meeting to developme tools for measuring progress. One of the most important aspects of a hospital system improving enterprise imaging is clear standards for workflow.
Richard Wiggins, MD of the University of Utah spoke about the value of working together and creating as a group with diverse experiences:
“The ability to have input from the executives, providers, and vendors, and thought leaders all combined allows for a powerful forum. The integration of short talks with table discussions and then cross table pollination of ideas and the systematic placement of providers, vendors and thought leaders all intermixed at the tables led to some good discussions. Frequently there are systems, like PACS that have features that were likely very exciting and interesting to the CS and EE people who put it together, but have no actual use in the imaging clinical workflow. In addition, we have found that each site has its own idiosyncratic workflow and productivity issues, so one PACS may work great in one shop, but not in another, and this becomes more complicated with the integration PACS/SR/RIS. A combination of the systems at one shop may work great, and the same combination may not work well at another site.”
The measurement vehicle for enterprise imaging adoption, progress and success was defined by a group of four provider leaders:
- Rasu B. Shrestha, MD, MBA: Chief Innovation Officer, UPMC
- Alexander J. Towbin, MD: Associate Chief, Clinical Operations and Radiology Informatics, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.
- Paul G. Nagy, Ph.D: Associate Professor of Radiology, John Hopkins University.
- Christopher J. Roth, MD: Assistant Professor of Radiology, Vice Chair Information Technology and Clinical Informatics, Director of Imaging Informatics Strategy, Duke Health.
These measures are to be administered to organizations who have in place a multi-speciality governance and one of the following:
- Capture including DICOM and at least one of the following: visible light images, audio, or waveforms.
- Storage of images in a single enterprise archive or in a federated by connected set of archives.
- Viewing of images through a universal viewer integrated into the EMR.
This measurement tool will be available through KLAS research and can be used for industry wide information and ongoing system management. Alexander Towbin MD shared his experiences in creating the measurement vehicle and meeting with colleagues at the Keystone Summit:
“I was impressed that so many thought leaders in imaging IT – both on the provider side and the vendor side- were able to come together to discuss enterprise imaging. There was palpable excitement in the room that we were working on the next BIG thing in healthcare IT and that our work would allow providers of all types to better care for their patients.”
Better patient care is always the center of Keystone Summit meetings. Creating standards for deployment and adoption of imaging will benefit doctors in providing patient care and improve collaboration within and between healthcare organizations, enabling better care for each individual. Standards development by a group of experts in the field will help improve vendor and provider clarity.
Many of the participants worked for competitors or had worked together at different points in their careers. Don Woodlock shared some of his experiences with the collaboration between key stakeholders involved in Enterprise Imaging.
“I personally loved the discussion, love taking the lead from our luminary providers, and working together across vendors to come up with the ideal workflow, user experience, and image availability solutions. From a vendor perspective this was much more of a community trying to make patient care better than a group of competitors doing their own things. In my case this may have been helped by personally having 4 people that worked for me over the years now at 4 different vendors at the meeting with me – friendships, a common vision, and serving the patient and the physician always trump competition. We’ll all get our chance to innovate and create our own unique variants to this common vision down the road.”
Collaborating across interest groups and with provider entities and vendors is one of the best ways to ensure that products meet provider needs and expectations. This work will allow providers to give better care and improve future enterprise imaging product creation. KLAS research facilitated the meeting of leaders to reflect on the current state of enterprise imaging and plan for the future. Moving the needle from hype and hyperbole to hope for better patient care. KLAS Research is quietly facilitating nationwide leadership from the mountains of Utah. The pioneers of healthcare will take inspiration from current experts and lead the next generation of people dedicated to do what is right.
