Sound Shore Hospital System Awards CoActiv $2,500,000
PACS, CR and Five-Year Archiving and Digital Conversion Contract
Sound Shore, Mount Vernon Facilities Undergo Major Digital Radiology Upgrade
November 25, 2007 - Chicago, IL - RSNA 2007 -- Sound Shore Health System of Westchester has selected CoActiv to implement the conversion of Sound Shore Medical Center (New Rochelle, NY) and sister facility Mount Vernon Hospital (Mount Vernon, NY) to fully digital radiology environments. The multi-site, multi-phase project will combine CoActiv EXAM-PACS® for digital image management, viewing and distribution, and CoActiv EXAM-VAULT® QUAD-REDUNDANT ARCHIVING™ for image storage and disaster recovery (DR). CoActiv is also providing an expansive enterprise-wide radiology network IT infrastructure upgrade and, as an authorized AGFA reseller, a complete computed radiography (CR) installation.
“A key goal of the project is to enhance physician and patient satisfaction with faster exam turnaround, improved department management and better communication with referring physicians,” explains Tom Truscio, Radiology Administrator for the two facilities. “The key challenge was to accomplish this within the budgetary scale of two medium sized suburban teaching hospitals.”
Following a two-year search of more than seven vendors, CoActiv emerged as the only company that could implement a solution meeting the hospital system’s combined financial and technology goals. In particular, within several years of conversion, the hospital system wanted to offset conversion costs with the savings realized through the elimination of film and related expenses.
“CoActiv offered an extremely high-quality product at a truly affordable price,” says Truscio. “Moreover, with its flexible financing package, we will be able to fund the PACS and related upgrades completely through our operating budgets. The digital conversion will actually begin saving us money within five years. And any savings due to a reduction in staffing will be in addition to that figure.”
Sound Shore provides primary, acute, emergency and long-term health care to the residents of southern Westchester. The 321-bed facility is the largest teaching hospital in the county. Mount Vernon is a busy 196-bed community hospital also serving lower Westchester County, which borders on New York City. Both hospitals offer a range of modalities with exam volumes totaling more than 50,000 annually at each facility.
Prior to the newly scheduled conversation, both departments are currently fully film-based and face the typical challenges of high film processing and management costs as well as slow exam turnaround and communications with referring and consulting physicians. With the goal of stepping up department efficiencies, as well as providing physicians with the enhanced image viewing and manipulation capabilities of the digital age, under Truscio’s direction, the hospital system set out to find a solution.
“We fully realized that we were late getting into the digital game, and we were really committed to making the transition,” he comments. “We hoped to find a mature, tried-and-true technology at an affordable price,” he says. “However, before identifying CoActiv, we had all but given up on meeting our digital goals.”
CoActiv provided an advanced, all-encompassing solution. With EXAM-PACS, the hospital will enjoy all of today’s state-of-the-art features, from 3D processing and streamlined offsite exam communication to paperless workflow with automated scanning and digital filing of prescriptions, technologist’s notes and more. This comprehensive digital upgrade also includes full integration of the hospitals’ HIS/RIS solutions.
As part of the digital conversion, each hospital will have a full PACS application and onsite live digital storage holding more than five years of exams. The configuration will enable streamlined enterprise-wide image access across hospitals on a single platform. In addition to radiology, this will include the emergency room (ER), operating room (OR) and other key hospital areas.
All exams also will be backed up offsite on two additional live archives through CoActiv’s EXAM-VAULT Quad-Redundant Archiving. The offsite system also will become the primary archive for older exams as they age.
Before selecting CoActiv, radiologists carefully evaluated EXAM-PACS features and were extremely impressed with the results. Reference sites also spoke highly about the technology. “CoActiv also was extremely accessible to answer our questions and work with us to meet our needs,” says Truscio. “We know this will be an extremely positive and productive relationship. This contract with CoActiv was just finalized the week before RSNA. Radiologists are eagerly awaiting the conversion which will begin in December, with a go-live scheduled for January.”
“We are proud to have been selected by these prestigious area hospitals, particularly from such a large pool of potential vendors,” comments Edward Heere, President and CEO of CoActiv. “We also are pleased to bring the benefits of PACS to the talented and hard-working staff of two community hospitals that will benefit significantly from a digital transition.”
“The two hospitals had very demanding requirements and wanted a single vendor to manage a comprehensive, fully integrated digital conversion,” continues Heere. “CoActiv’s unique history of being a PACS company that evolved from a 20 year old healthcare IT company positioned us perfectly for this project… and our relationship with AGFA Healthcare enabled us to provide the ideal CR solution.”
About CoActiv Medical
CoActiv Medical is a software and IT systems provider to hospitals and imaging centers offering a complete line of picture archiving and communications system. (PACS), teleradiology and DICOM utilities through their EXAM-PACS® EXAM-PACS is an all-inclusive, affordable, enterprise PACS solution with image management tools designed for easy integration into imaging facilities of all sizes. CoActiv also offers modular PACS components, including the EXAM-FILER® CD-Burning Solution, EXAM-VAULT® Archive Solution, patent-pending EXAM-SENDER® Referring Physician System, EXAM-3D™ full-featured 3D color reconstruction and visualization, EXAM-NET™ Teleradiology suite and EXAM-RIS™ being introduced at this year’s RSNA These are all also available individually to add advanced functionality for imaging facilities with existing PACS solutions. Contact CoActiv at (203) 431-0002;
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; www.coactiv.com.
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