About Fortius Clinic
Fortius Clinic, in London England, is a leading orthopaedic and sports injury clinic that specialises in the diagnosis and treatment of musculoskeletal conditions. Founded by a group of 12 orthopaedic surgeons and three radiologists in 2010, the group delivers the highest quality orthopaedic and musculoskeletal services.
Since opening their first office in September 2011, the Fortius Clinic has grown quickly, opening a second location in 2016 with a third set for the near future. The consultant group has also grown rapidly, today employing 50 orthopaedic surgeons, 12 radiologists, 10 sports and exercise physicians. Together, they provide custom care to 20,000 patients per year – ranging from everyday people to professional footballers, cricketers, rugby players, Olympic athletes and more.
“IntelePACS is very user friendly, which makes it easy for everyone to work with, whether you’re an orthopaedic surgeon or a radiologist. In addition, the Intelerad team has been easy to work with, making the sales and deployment process painless.”
Overcoming the Challenges set by a Legacy System
As a rapidly growing organisation focused on high performance, the Fortius Clinic’s original PACS left a lot to be desired. In terms of key functionality, the system was unable to integrate with a RIS, which meant radiologists had to report through a separate system. In addition, it wasn’t compatible with Mac computers, which a large percentage of the consultants used.
Remote access to images was also a major obstacle, making it difficult for physicians to work from home, a different clinic or hospital, or when travelling abroad. The system had limited image transfer capabilities, which meant exams would need to be manually uploaded into their systems. Given their patients typically being accompanied by scans that were conducted at different locations across the U.K., adding them to the system was a time consuming, and, at times, complicated process.
But perhaps the most difficult challenge that Fortius faced with their original PACS was the system’s stability. With 50 surgeons operating across multiple sites, having their system go down for a couple of hours every week was a major issue. And not only did these events happen on a regular basis, the provider’s support team were unable to restore service in a reasonable amount of time.
“We were looking for a really reliable, robust system, that was completely future-proof and would grow with us,” said Lucy Ball, Director of Radiology at the Fortius Clinic. “IntelePACS checked all of those boxes and more.”
Access to Images at Any Time, from Any Location
Recognising that a change was needed, Fortius Clinic began exploring options and discovered IntelePACS upon recommendation from their patient management system provider.
Through their IntelePACS deployment, clinicians have access to images at any time, from any location, while Intelerad’s referring physician portal, InteleConnect®, allows referring physicians to keep a close watch on real-time order status through the patient activity dashboard and receive results notifications and access to reports through their mobile devices.
Stability and an Improved Workflow Drive Success
A year after deploying IntelePACS, Fortius has already seen significant improvements to their operations. For starters, the system has been extremely reliable with zero instances of the system going offline, which has helped ensure smooth operations while improving productivity. In terms of radiology workflow, Fortius has seen vast improvements since deploying IntelePACS. In part, this comes from streamlining how studies are allocated, as well as enabling the clinic to have reports structured to meet their specific needs.
“Our radiologists love InteleViewer,” said Ball. “They love being able to annotate and mark the key images and send them off into a report. That’s a big plus.”
Reaping the Rewards of an Industry-Leading Viewer
The clinic has also benefited greatly from InteleViewer™, Intelerad’s industry-leading diagnostic viewer that provides fast, high performance viewing across all modalities and bandwidths.
According to Ball, the surgical staff at Fortius also enjoy using InteleViewer to review patient images and reports prior to operations, noting that the solution’s streamlined interface and workflow make it easy for non-radiologists to access images and reports.
Fortius Clinic has also been avid users of Intelerad’s referring physicians portal, InteleConnect®. For Fortius, the solution has been useful for providing surgical staff with rapid access to images and reports. At the same time, InteleConnect notifies administrative staff by email as soon as a report is available.
An Integral Piece to a Growing Clinic
With a practice and reputation that continues to grow quickly, radiology operations at Fortius are primed for growth in the coming years. At the centre of those operations will be IntelePACS, to support Fortius in the mission to provide individuals and athletes with the highest levels of care so they can perform at the peak of their abilities on the world’s biggest stages.
“IntelePACS is very user friendly, which makes it easy for everyone to work with, whether you’re an orthopaedic surgeon or a radiologist,” said Ball. “In addition, the Intelerad team has been easy to work with, making the sales and deployment process painless.”