The Radiologists Determine Whether a CD is Imported or Not

by Scott Edwards
(Montgomery, AL)

I am the Chief PACS Administrator for a health system comprising of 3 hospitals, 6 imaging centers, and 3 orthopedic clinics. We have set a system-wide policy that only CD's that are necessary as relavant priors to a current exam be loaded into PACS. This must be a request made directly by a radiologist. If a refering physician would like the images to be loaded into PACS it must be approved by one of our 40 radiologists.

And yes, we do place the images into the long term storage of our PACS. This is mostly because if a radiologists uses the images from a CD as a comparison to a current study, then those images (legaly) need to be made a part of that patient's permanent record at that facility. It covers both the hospital and the radiolgoists from future legal recourse.

Luckily, we have 2 factors which made this an easy decision. First, we have Philips iSite PACS for which we do not pay for additional storage. As we need more space they simply add it to the rack. Second, our radiologists are unique in such that they are very cost consious for our system. They are excellent gate-keepers that help control the influx of unnecessary priors loaded into PACS.