Radiology Imaging: PACS

PACS and Radiology Practice: Enjoy the Benefits but Acknowledge the Threats was written to advocate for the implementation of PACS (picture archiving and communication system) as a tool to provide convenient storage and access to images from multiple modalities as well as billing data and permanently archived materials. (The inclusion of non-image data, like scanned documents, combined with the medicinal imaging of PACS is known as DICOM, which stand for digital imaging and communications in medicine). PACS enables simultaneous, remote viewing capabilities and lessens lost, misplaced, or ruined films, pertinent to patient care.

The introduction of PACS technology alleviates much disorganization that plagues management and leadership in radiology departments. Furthermore, “PACS-directed department can overcome operational deficiencies and speed throughput, thereby enhancing productivity… [and] exert a salutary effect on delivery of patient care.” Through this methodology, pictorial interpretations can be rendered immediately, independent of limitations caused by distance or location. In this way, efficiency and efficacy in patient care is not hindered by consultation times between radiologists and physicians and as a result, is quicker. However valuable, the dismissal of face-to-face consultation as a symptomatic effect of PACS technology, is detrimental to the radiologist in that the availability of images are simultaneously available for their referrers and equally detrimental to the patients who do not receive radiologists’ diagnostic expertise. Thus, with PACS in a hospital setting, in which images are readily accessible, the need for engaged radiologists becomes obsolete.

This article was written for radiologists and patients alike to advocate for technology that advances patient care. The article is relevant in its commentary on the expansion of technology in the medicinal field and how face-to-face communication is inherently less present and deemed less important. However, the article warns that to effectively utilize innovation such as PACS, adjustments must be made in the adopting facilities. Personal and inter-department communication can be sustained with PACS but requires supplemental, in-person conversation concerning diagnosis initiated by radiologists.

Reference

Baker, R. Stephen. PACS and Radiology Practice: Enjoy the Benefits but Acknowledge the Threats. AJR. 1999; 173:1173-1174.