In the era of health IT and meaningful use, many providers are looking for a one-stop shop to house all their cardiovascular reporting needs. However, in terms of the cardiovascular information system (CVIS), most users reported that their system was only 65 percent complete, and most are still looking for an all-in-one solution to meet their needs, according to an October KLAS report titled, “Will the Complete CVIS Please Stand Up?”
To understand what a complete CVIS solution would entail, KLAS decided that it would need the following five modules: cath PACS, echo PACS, cath reporting, echo reporting and vascular PACS.
"Many cardiology vendors are vulnerable to replacement," Monique Rasband, cardiology IT research director and author of the report said in a statement. "While some vendors have many of the necessary pieces in place to be considered a complete CVIS solution, providers report that no vendor is doing all of them. All of the solutions are missing something."
During the study, providers were asked to rate the completeness of their cardiology vendor solution on a 100-point scale; on average providers reported their solutions to be 65 percent complete. Of those providers who said that their CVIS was incomplete, 51 percent said the missing piece to the puzzle was clinical reporting.
Others reported that helpful modules would include: point-of-care patient tracking, pediatrics, cardiac MR, stress, cardiac CT, C-PACS, nuclear medicine and Holter monitoring, among others.
So, how do the vendors stack up? The ratings are as follows:
- Digisonics DigiView with a performance score of 79.7.
- ScImage PicomEnterprise Cardiology with a performance score of 75.1.
- Philips Healthcare Xcelera with a performance score of 74.1.
- Siemens Healthcare syngo Dynamics with a performance score of 74.1.
- McKesson Horizon Cardiology with a performance score of 73.5.
- Merge Healthcare Merge Cardio (Amicas Vericis) with a performance score of 73.5.
- GE Healthcare Centricity Cardiology with a performance score of 72.
- Fujifilm Synapse cardiovascular with a performance score of 70.9.
- Lumedx Apollo Advance with a performance score of 65.8.
- Agfa HealthCare Impax Cardiovascular with a performance score of 64.1.
While there is still room for improvement, KLAS reported that seven of the 10 ranked vendors were trending up in terms of performance scores this year.
“Who will be the leader in cardiology? It remains to be seen which vendor will offer the functionality providers want in a complete solution,” KLAS concluded.