Located in Tompkinsville, Kentucky, Monroe County Medical Center is a small, 49-bed acute-care hospital in rural South Central Kentucky. Medical imaging services include CT, MRI, ultrasound, bone density, digital mammography, general X-ray and fluoroscopy. In the past, images were read by a radiology generalist, working part-time as a contractor, who was on site for a few hours, three days a week. In many cases, radiology reports required a 48-hour wait. Mammography results could take three to six days. Hospital administrators recognized that radiology operations presented a ripe opportunity for improving the quality of the patient experience.To that end, Monroe County Medical Center forged a relationship with a Chicago-based radiology service provider, Radiology Imaging Consultants, SC. These highly-trained specialists use InteleOne®, a distributed radiology solution from Intelerad that provides direct access to studies, priors and reports. InteleOne provides a single, highly productive environment in which RIC radiologists efficiently and collaboratively perform real-time professional readings, around the clock, regardless of where the radiologists or patients are located. Today, thanks to RIC and InteleOne, emergency patients at Monroe County Medical Center receive results in less than 30 minutes. Non-emergency X-ray readings are turned around in two hours or less, rather than two days.

The sign outside the Women’s Center for Radiology in Orlando, Florida, announces the arrival of 3D mammography. Susan Curry, M.D., founder and medical director, wants to get the message out to women in Central Florida about 3D mammography and the difference it can make in the early detection of breast cancer.

With the need to transport images and make imaging studies readily available to referring physicians, WCGH got into the picture archiving and communications system (PACS) game relatively early, implementing its first system in 2003. When it contacted Infinitt North America (then SmartPACS) at that time, no one knew it would be the start of a technology partnership that would support them into the next decade or that its PACS would become the hub of its clinical IT platform.