Cardiovascular care processes can be as complex as the patient cases they’re designed to manage. Accurate and structured documentation and reporting, quick access to images, patient information, and standardized workflows are typically inconsistent and can be a struggle across cardiovascular departments and hospitals. And for some, a lack of a central information system can pose a significant challenge too.

They need an integrated cardiology picture archiving and communication system (PACS) and cardiovascular information system (CVIS) that bridges the gaps between care areas and healthcare information systems--a single point of access for patient data, waveforms, images, analysis tools and physician reports–combined with powerful end-to-end management, analytics and workflow tools across the cardiovascular care pathway.

Here are some examples of how Centricity^TM Cardio Enterprise¹ lifts administrative workload off clinicians, letting patients remain the number one priority.

Faster, more predictable echo report turnaround times, automated legacy workflows

Licking Memorial Hospital, a 225-bed hospital in Newark, Ohio, with 25 coronary beds and more than 7500 surgical procedures a year, needed faster and more predictable report turnaround time for echo studies.

Centricity Cardio Enterprise—comprised of Centricity^TM Universal Viewer and Centricity^TM Cardio Workflow—was designed to address these problems, and help improve operational efficiency and clinical care quality. With Centricity Universal Viewer and Centricity Cardio Workflow, the hospital reduced echo report turnaround time by 82 percent. Predictability in turnaround times was also achieved, with a 5-day reduction of interquartile variance—from 5.9 to 0.9 days.

Activities like transcription, dictation, sonographer preliminary report review, and worksheet data entry and transfer were also eliminated from their reporting process—resulting in a streamlined workflow.

Improved imaging access, quality control compliance, and report completion times

At Klinikum Nuremberg, one of the largest municipal hospitals in the EU, because of Centricity Cardio Workflow’s seamless integration with the PACS, physicians now enjoy nearly instant access to images from any system in the department. Clinicians saw the time it took them to complete a catheterization lab report decrease from 15-20 minutes to 5-10 minutes.

Additionally, quality control compliance went up from 95-98 percent to 100 percent, partly due to the data and analytics delivered via Centricity Cardio Workflow.

Inventory management at the cardiology department has drastically improved too. Nurses no longer need to review stock to identify shortages physically. Simple, quick queries now generate stock reports and save around two extra hours of work daily.

Standardized workflows and short report turnaround times in a multisite IDN

Ascension Wisconsin, a group of 5 hospitals that performs over 575,000 annual cardiology procedures every year, struggled with disparate workflows and IT systems. Its physician reporting workflow was complex and manual, and turnaround times for reports were long and highly variable.

With Centricity Cardio Workflow, Ascension reduced typical cath physician report turnaround times by 92 percent—from 7.5 hours to 30 minutes on average. GE Healthcare's Mac-Lab™ procedure reports, part of a hemodynamic lab workflow, are also now typically available in the EMR within 12 minutes, and error-prone processes have been reduced.

Centricity Cardio Workflow provides workflow and structured reporting from all modalities in one cardiology information system. With it, cardiologists can create compliant patient encounter documentation faster and with less effort. Centricity Universal Viewer optimizes productivity by enabling clinicians to access, analyze, and interpret imaging data quickly and easily with intelligent tools in a single solution. Centricity Cardio Enterprise also has built-in, powerful administrative tools to help streamline inventory management and enhance operational efficiency.

To learn about GE Healthcare’s Cardiovascular IT solution, visit our website.

¹ Centricity^TM Cardio Enterprise is comprised of Centricity Cardio Workflow and Centricity Universal Viewer.

The results expressed in this document may not be applicable to a particular site or installation and individual results may vary. This document and its contents are provided to you for informational purposes only and do not constitute a representation, warranty, or performance guarantee. GE disclaims liability for any loss, which may arise from reliance on, or use of information contained in this document.