Boston Children’s Hospital is one of the largest freestanding pediatric facilities in the world, and the largest pediatric trauma center in New England. It treats patients from all over the globe, many of whom bring imaging exams that were performed in their local community. The organization was finding that exams on CDs were slowing down their busy outpatient clinics, including orthopedics, Boston Children’s busiest service line. Access to these outside exams was especially problematic for its trauma program, which receives about 1,200 patients a year from more than 45 different hospitals.
The Challenge
Boston Children’s wanted a more efficient way to work with CDs in its outpatient clinics, as well as give its trauma team faster access to view and share outside exams during emergency transfers. Clinicians were also having significant issues with handling a high volume of outside medical imaging exams:
• Outpatient clinics were flooded with CDs sent by referring facilities
• Trauma team could not reliably access patient imaging electronically in emergent situations
• Lack of access to priors was causing them to re-image and re-radiate pediatric patients
“For us, it’s seamless… Our workflow, our work style, everything has been the same, except that now we see the images and we can plan, and planningahead for a trauma patient is key, especially for a critically injured trauma patient.”