Trover Medical Center in Madisonville, Ky.
The InteleOne Ripple Effect: Kentucky’s Trover Health System
Intelerad’s InteleOne distributed radiology solution enables a regional healthcare provider to reduce costs while maintaining and improving its focus on accessibility, convenience and high levels of quality and service.
About Trover Health System
Trover Health System is an integrated health provider in Western Kentucky with a 55-year history of providing excellent patient care. More than 170 primary care, mid-level and specialist physicians serve patients at the system’s 410-bed hospital and eight outpatient clinics. Trover meets the medical needs of nearly 200,000 residents in a six-county area.
Accessibility and Convenience are High Priorities
Providing maximum accessibility and convenience for patients is a major focus of the Trover Health System. For example, Trover recently opened its second “Convenient Care” walk-in clinic inside an area Wal-Mart store. Similarly, Trover strives to serve patients’ radiology needs close to home. The health provider offers a full service, multi-site medical imaging department, with a multi-specialty clinic located in Madisonville, Ky., and three other imaging satellites in surrounding counties.
A recent effort to identify new cost-saving opportunities inspired Trover executives to explore new radiology outsourcing models. The original radiology model combined an employed radiologist with a third-party service provider for after-hours readings. Trover sought to establish a new model that would provide the same or even higher levels of quality and timeliness to patients, while reducing costs.
New Radiology Model Reduces Costs and Enhances Patient Care
A year-long research process led Trover to a contract with Radiology Imaging Consultants, SC (RIC), a Chicago-based radiology service provider. The RIC practice includes more than 75 radiologists, with extensive clinical expertise in a broad range of sub-specialty areas, providing final interpretations for a wide range of client facilities.
Today, RIC’s highly-trained specialists provide final interpretations 24x7 for Trover Health System patients. They leverage 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. With RIC performing all interpretations, Trover radiology reports are effectively standardized, enabling more efficient and complete communication of data to the hospital doctors.
The decision to outsource radiology interpretations to RIC has enabled Trover to reduce costs in multiple areas. One notable area of cost savings is in transcription. Previously, Trover employed transcriptionists to perform standard dictation transcription. Today, RIC’s leverage of a voice recognition system saves time and money in that final step, significantly reducing Trover’s labor costs while shrinking the time required to finalize dictated reports by nearly 75 percent – from 15 hours to less than 4.
New Efficiencies Achieved in Emergency Care
The new outsourcing model has also enabled faster, more efficient emergency room care, with additional savings of time and cost. Previously, says Jim Bailey, Director of Medical Imaging at Trover Health System, ER physicians performed preliminary non-CT/MRI readings for emergency patients, with subsequent followup by the Trover radiologist. Today, with RIC performing the interpretations, “The ER physicians get a radiologist interpretation within minutes,” Bailey says. This enables emergency cases to be handled more efficiently, with no duplication of effort, while enhancing patient care.
Strong Support from Intelerad Enables Successful Project
Bailey credits the success of the new radiology outsourcing model to the strong working relationship between Intelerad, RIC and Trover Health System. He praises the responsiveness of Intelerad, as well as its ability to integrate with other technologies and accommodate the unique requirements of any installation. “There was great support by everyone to make this an outstanding successful project,” he says. In addition to a strong foundation of powerful, underlying technology, “It truly is the people that make this work,” Bailey says.
Watch the interview with Jim Bailey, Director of Imaging Services, to learn how Intelerad can help you improve your level of patient care and your bottom line.
For more information: www.intelerad.com
July 26, 2024 
