Located in Birmingham, Children’s of Alabama is the third largest pediatric medical facility in the U.S. and the only standalone pediatric hospital and Level I pediatric trauma facility in Alabama. With 375 beds, cribs and bassinets, Children’s receives patients from surrounding Alabama counties and nearly every state in the nation. With a large referral network, it was imperative that physicians were able to view, share and store medical images quickly and reliably. However, over 205 of CDs that referring providers would send were either unreadable or contained corrupt files. This problem continuously forced physicians at Children’s to disrupt their workflow and caused frustration, particularly among the trauma surgeons. Further, young patients were frequently rescanned and exposed to additional radiation— simply because the original medical image could not be read.
Josh Pavlovec
PACS Administrator
Children’s of Alabama
Led by Children’s PACS administrator, Josh Pavlovec, the radiology team considered several solutions to help solve its physicians’ troubles and medical imaging dilemma. The team looked at VPNs, but ultimately decided a cloud-based medical image exchange would expedite physician workflow, while also providing security and mobile access. Children’s assessed several solutions and selected Nuance’s PowerShare Network, which promised to be less “cumbersome” for physicians and referring facilities. Two years later, Pavlovec remarks, “We do not regret the steps we took in selecting PowerShare.”
