Turning Your Imaging Practice Outside In
Schools around the country host Red Ribbon Week, which encourages kids to remain drug-free. During the week, the kids are encouraged to participate in creative activities to get them to think about the choices they make.
One of the days is spent wearing their clothes inside out, signifying living healthy from the inside out. Simple activities drive the vital message. Imagine a day at an imaging center where all radiologists, technologists, PACS administrators, etc. wear their clothes inside out to signify their focus on patients and referring physicians.
Would this spark more creative thinking about how to change processes and technologies to better support their community? Would it drive home the point that customer focus comes from the outside in?
Diagnostic imaging practices have literally purchased tons of technology to support their important work; however, is the primary focus on the internal operations or the external interactions?
By focusing on external interactions, imaging centers can map technology and processes to ensure proper alignment with delivering quality care to their patients and building stronger relationships with physicians.
The following two questions illustrate this approach:
- What is the best method to accept orders and deliver patient reports from the referring community?
- What are the underlying technology requirements to support delivering higher quality care to patients?
Answering each question from the outside in may change the way technology and processes are implemented.
The Outside-In Approach
Figure 1 illustrates the Outside-In Model for a radiology practice. See PDF for illustration.
Simply stated, it is balancing an intense focus on your customers with operational processes and supporting technology
The outside-in approach delivers a seamless interactive referring community. The clients become an integral part of your operations, not an extension.
With this model, there is a framework for making decisions on how to work with the referring community and how to properly align operational processes. It provides a different way to analyze the requirements and make productive decisions.
Referring Community
Depending on whether your radiology practice is a freestanding imaging center or a department within a hospital, the referring community may differ slightly.Understanding your key constituencies is critical to grasping their requirements. A key trend in the referring community is the adoption of electronic medical record (EMR) systems.
Depending on the source, EMR adoption by physicians is now nearly 25 percent and growing. This trend cannot be ignored.
To adapt to this trend, imaging centers have three possible options to consider:
- Status quo: Accept paper orders and deliver paper patient reports
- Offer a Web portal for order submission and patient report posting
- Directly integrate with an EMR to accept orders and send patient reports
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To download a complete PDF version of Turning Your Imaging Practice Outside In, follow the attachment below.
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