ImageGrid Referring Physician Viewer was configured to provide easy Web-enabled viewing of patient studies to the centers referral base.
The Customer
Radiology and MRI of Bethlehem (RMRI) brings together the experience and pioneering visions of two of the finest medical imaging practices in the Lehigh Valley region of Pennsylvania: Radiology Associates, founded in 1950, and MRI of Bethlehem, founded in 1987.
While both practices were always guided by the same group of expert radiologists, a drive to improve efficiency and deliver a higher level of patient care led the two groups to form Radiology and MRI of Bethlehem, Inc.
Today, RMRI stands as a full service imaging center providing the most up-to-date services in MRI, CT, ultrasound, radiography, mammography, nuclear medicine, bone density measurement and fluoroscopy. While offering high quality imaging in a convenient private office may seem like a recent trend, our organization has known this is the best way to serve the community for over fifty years.
“If your desire is to implement an inexpensive, transparent, scalable, low maintenance and robust PACS system, then Candelis is the right choice,” said John Brase, director at RMRI.
RMRI’s experienced Radiologists and staff continue the proud tradition begun in the 1950’s. RMRI is committed to providing patients and physicians in the community with timely high quality medical imaging, delivering exceptional care in a personal and convenient environment.
The Challenge
Given the growing volume and complexity of studies, RMRI was faced with significant challenges in archiving and managing patient’s studies. The implementation a feature-rich, scalable, reliable and yet cost-effective PACS was a significant and time-sensitive requirement. In addition, with the impending addition of a Siemens Novation for Digital Mammography, RMRI needed to implement a PACS that could provide a fully integrated and seamless workflow for both General Radiology and Mammography. Brase was given the task of identifying vendors and developing a short list for consideration by the radiologists. Mr. Brase knew that a Web-enabled solution would streamline the operations of RMRI and provide the radiologists with ability to read studies quickly from anywhere and provide reports in a timely manner. In addition, in order to grow the practice, he needed to vastly improve report distribution with referring physicians and provide them with the ability to view studies and reports very easily. In talking to various vendors, Mr. Brase realized that radiology/mammography PACS solutions could cost anywhere from $150,000 to $250,000. In addition, annual maintenance contracts were in the $30,000 to $50,000 range and the complexity of these systems meant that the practice had to factor in additional costs for an on-site IT resource. Many of the other PACS vendors were also going to charge RMRI extra fees if they exceeded certain number of studies per year. Making the right PACS decision was going to be critical to the long term prospects of Radiology and MRI of Bethlehem.
The Solution
Mr. Brase came across Candelis, Inc. and was quickly impressed with the highly cost-effective and yet feature-rich ImageGrid PACS appliance. Mr. Brase and Dr. Ned Enea received a demonstration of the solution and also had an opportunity to talk to several existing customers of Candelis. The ImageGrid’s price point was a fraction of other solutions and its “appliance” architecture meant that the solution could be implemented and maintained with minimal IT supervision. With the ImageGrid PACS solution, Mr. Brase and RMRI were able to quantify the total cost of ownership for a PACS system and better plan for the growth of their imaging practice. RMRI was also pleased that with ImageGrid PACS there are no additional fees to connect new modalities or workstations, which was an important consideration given their plans for adding modalities.
RMRI decided to implement an ImageGrid PACS with 9TB in raw capacity in a RAID 5 configuration. In addition, the ImageGrid’s Web-enabled FDA 510(k) cleared radiology and mammography viewers provided all four radiologists easy and seamless access to all studies. ImageGrid PACS was implemented within a day and all modalities were easily configured to send studies to it. ImageGrid Referring Physician Viewer was configured to provide easy Web-enabled viewing of patient studies to the center’s referral base, with log-in capability directly from RMRI’s Web site.
In order to comply with HIPAA requirements, RMRI is backing up all patient data on their ImageGrid PACS to a fully integrated tape library solution using the ImageGrid ILM (information lifecycle management) software module. The tape library can also be used as part of an ILM strategy, whereby aged studies can be solely maintained on tape.
The Results
The ImageGrid PACS Appliance was installed within a single day with no interruptions to workflow and the RMRI’s daily operations. RMRI’s staff were pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to work with ImageGrid PACS and how it immediately started to automate their workflow.
“We implemented the Candelis PACS for a fraction of what we had been quoted from other vendors. The entire implementation and transition was seamless and Candelis’ support as been excellent,” said Mr. Brase.
ImageGrid’s inherent cost advantages meant that RMRI will realize a significant return-on-investment (ROI), giving it the ability and the flexibility to devote precious financial resources to invest in the latest modalities for better patient care.
“Candelis has enabled me to better compete with far larger institutions at a fraction of the cost of other vendor offerings. Today, we are able to profitably provide timely imaging services to patients and referring physicians,” said Mr. Brase.
July 25, 2024 
