Franklin, Tennessee, December 2011 - AHRA and Regents collaborate on an online solution to improve decision-making and business management for radiology departments.
Faced with the usual limitations and wanting to maximize resources, a medical imaging department would like to determine whether it has appropriate staffing levels and if there might be room to improve efficiency and productivity. However, to do so effectively requires useful data with which to perform an analysis, make comparisons, and set benchmarks. Unfortunately, in the past, this meant using printed, published data, which was already “old” before the book was bound.
“The AHRA [Association for Medical Imaging Management] has published a book over the years that’s the result of a manual survey process: AHRA sends out a survey; the members fill out the survey; they mail the survey back in; somebody compiles the surveys; the information is analyzed and put into tables; the data is published in a book; a member buys the book; and then it gets mailed out,” says Brian Baker, president of Regents Health Resources, Franklin, Tenn. The whole process takes months. And when you’re looking at things like staffing, by the time the information does get out, it doesn’t represent the market.”
Recognizing this, the AHRA, Sudbury, Mass, teamed with Regents to develop a tool intended to provide fresh, dynamic data, analytics, and benchmarking capabilities online—thereby bypassing the publishing process and shaving off those months of production. “One of the components of this tool is to have data available for medical imaging managers in as close to a real-time environment as possible,” says Mike Suddendorf, director of marketing for AHRA.
More Than a Data Dump
The tool is based on Regents’ Mirror Operational Dashboard and Reporting solution. The system collects, analyzes, and provides live data feeds and automated reports designed to enhance decision-making and business management. “Good quality data is critical in making sound operational management decisions. If you are working with data that’s 2-years old or takes a lot of man hours to access and compare yourself to, then it’s not realistic to expect it to be put to very good use,” Suddendorf says.
The tool permits the collection of data from a broad expanse of sources and in a wide variety of formats during any time period and presents it in a useful, interactive, dynamic fashion. Though the first wave of data points are still being defined, the information to be collected will ultimately vary, with its nature driven by the AHRA membership. Members will have the opportunity to suggest queries regarding specific data sets, which (if collected) would then be available to all.
“So, if membership says we’re interested in equipment downtime as it relates to MRI, for example, we could query the medical imaging management community with a five-point survey on equipment downtime, which people could then respond to electronically, automatically putting the information into the data tool and giving users nearly immediate access to what’s out there,” Suddendorf says.
AHRA members can participate in the survey process and view their institution’s information free of charge. For a nominal annual fee—designed to replace the book publishing process—members will have access to the full data.
As the AHRA membership grows and changes, so too will the data. “It will be more reflective of the marketplace than data collected 6 months ago, or even a month ago, so that how a facility benchmarks this week will be different than how it benchmarks next week,” Baker says.
Information is anonymous, so institutional data remains confidential but still permits useful comparison. Drop-down menus will allow users to select the peer group they wish to compare themselves against. A large hospital could compare itself against similar large hospitals as well as small hospitals, Baker notes. Criteria will be based on different institutional or departmental characteristics, such as bed size or volume, respectively.
“As many others have realized, health care is data rich and information poor,” Baker stated in a release. “Collaborating with AHRA on this important project will help further define how data can lead to solutions for some of imaging’s toughest problems.”
The team is currently customizing the Mirror product for AHRA while integrating historical data for reference and trending purposes. With an expected completion date of early 2012, the team expects to make the solution available in the first quarter.
Renee Diiulio is a contributing writer for 24x7mag.com.
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