Vendor neutral archiving, or VNA as it has become known in radiology circles, is being used in healthcare facilities throughout the world.
Last summer, the largest healthcare system in England chose a vendor to supply all of its IT and VNA solutions. The six facilities that make up Barts Health NHS Trust serve around 2.5 million people in London and the surrounding area. Barts officials believe the VNA solution will help them with their long-term storage needs as well as increase the efficiency of their imaging workflow. Furthermore, Barts officials said they expect to see cost savings by being able to share resources through their VNA.
The VNA will connect to any DICOM-compliant storage solution, which will help offer the kind of infrastructure through which images can be shared across enterprises.
The use of VNA is nothing new in America, but an increasing number of healthcare facilities are beginning to see the advantages of true VNAs, which provide better access to medical imaging than any other solution out there. Referring physicians often relied on their patients to bring in film in the old days. Today, many patients are bringing in a CD that has been burned by their radiologist.
The CD burning method was thought to be a major step up in technology, but it produced its own array of challenges, which included problems with the burning equipment. Patients would sometimes show up to their referring physician with an unusable CD. The CD would also get misplaced far too often. With VNAs now becoming more common in the healthcare industry, CDs are a thing of the past and doctors simply need a secure Internet connection to view their patients’ images.
There are definitely greater demands for sharing images today than ever before. Patients would at one time only see one physician. Today, however, a patient has multiple physicians, often at different locations, who need to see the medical imaging associated with that patient. It’s easy to see how a CD being passed around could eventually get misplaced, which means the patient might have to reschedule another appointment and pay for another round of radiology.
Having a VNA on your side means you have the ability to reduce the size of your PACS solution. The number of medical images grows everyday, especially as a large portion of the population (Baby Boomers) is aging and requiring more medical images to assess their health.
Healthcare organizations large and small are adopting VNAs, however, the trend has been for the larger facilities to take the lead. History shows that the smaller facilities have fewer resources and have a more difficult time taking on VNA solutions, mainly because of cost.
There is a vendor out there looking out for the smaller facilities. They are called OffSite Image Management, Inc. The company has a mission that focuses on rural areas. At OffSite, we know that no matter how efficient your PACS is, there are things that it can’t do. For rural healthcare professionals and patients, this can be a hassle. Our solution, which is priced to please and of high quality, doesn’t carry any surprises. We don’t charge migration fees, start up fees or revolving fees, which is a perfect scenario for rural facilities. Call us today and get started.