A new white paper from HEALTHeLINK, the western New York clinical information exchange, finds that a little effort to reduce unnecessary duplicative CT scans could have saved $1.3 million and radiation exposure to patients during one six-month period.
The report finds that 90 percent of 2,763 pontentially unnecessary duplicative CT scans between July 2011 and December 2012 were ordered by physicians who either never or infrequently used HEALTHeLINK. About half of the patients who had a duplicative CT scan had already consented to have their information access through HEALTHeLINK by their treating providers.
Data to support the analysis was also provided by the region’s three major health insurance companies who also are stakeholders in HEALTHeLINK as are the region’s hospital systems and other provider organizations.
“These findings demonstrate the value an HIE provides by reducing the number of unnecessary tests which saves time, money and radiation exposure to our patients,” said David Scamurra, MD, pathologist, Eastern Great Lakes Pathology/X-Cell Laboratories and HEALTHeLINK chairman. “The technology provided by HEALTHeLINK can be used to address these issues on many fronts as western New York’s hospitals work to maximize the implementation and use of the HIE in emergency departments, on patient floors and in clinics, and doctors do the same in their private physician offices."
“We erred on being extremely conservative in our analysis, so we believe that the potential unnecessary radiation exposure to patients and cost savings to the health system could be significantly more,” said Daniel E. Porreca, HEALTHeLINK’s executive director. “The premise of investing in health information technology and health information exchange is to enable a patient’s health data, with their consent, to be shared through an HIE in order to improve the patient’s quality of care, the patient’s health, and in the process lowering the cost of care for the community.”
Access HEALTHeLINK's white paper,“Study of Duplicate CT Scans Show Promise of Health Information Exchange,” here.
Editor
Editor Beth earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and master’s in health communication. She has worked in hospital, academic and publishing settings over the past 20 years. Beth joined TriMed in 2005, as editor of CMIO and Clinical Innovation + Technology. When not covering all things related to health IT, she spends time with her husband and three children.