IMV: 80% of U.S. providers have C-PACS

Data from the cath labs at Scottsdale Healthcare in Arizona are directly exported to the ACC registries from the CVIS.

Eighty percent of the U.S. hospitals with cath labs have implemented a formal cardiology PACS (C-PACS) to store and utilize their cardiology-related images, such as cardiac cath, echocardiography, interventional angiography, electrophysiology, CT, MR, SPECT and PET/CT images, according to a market research report by IMV Medical Information Division.

This is a substantial increase from the 51 percent of hospitals who reported having C-PACS in similar research conducted by IMV in 2007.

“U.S. hospitals have made significant progress in integrating cardiology images with non-image data in cardiology PACS and cardiovascular information systems [CVIS] over the past three years,” observed Lorna Young, senior director of market research. “Cardiologists need patient images to be integrated with related non-image patient information in order to create structured reporting capabilities.”

Sixty-three percent of the surveyed hospitals indicated they have both C-PACS and CVIS, Young reported. “An additional 17 percent have a C-PACS, but no CVIS, 12 percent have a CVIS, but no C-PACS, while only 8 percent of the hospitals have no formal implementation of a C-PACS or CVIS.”

She continued, “Of the sites that have both systems, nearly half indicated that their C-PACS and CVIS are fully integrated, while the rest have not yet fully integrated these two systems. As a result, about one-third of all U.S. hospitals with cath labs presently have an integrated C-PACS-CVIS. Common components in an integrated C-PACS and CVIS include workstations, data archive infrastructures, and a common patient-centric database.”

IMV’s report also explored the present relationship between a hospital’s C-PACS and radiology PACS installations and solicited information about hospitals’ plans for the development of their cardiology image and information systems over the next three to five years.

The report revealed:

• Cardiac cath and echocardiography images and structured reporting form the backbone of the ideal integrated C-PACS and CVIS, with either or both modalities specified by all of the respondents. The third modality presently accessible or planned for access is interventional angiography.
• Forty-five percent of the C-PACS respondents that also have a radiology PACS have not yet integrated any common components with their existing radiology PACS.
• Eighty-seven percent of the hospitals are planning to purchase new, upgrade, replace or integrate their current C-PACS and/or CVIS capabilities over the next three years.
• Respondents were most likely to say that their cardiology departments (32.5 percent) or cardiac cath labs (18.5 percent) will manage their hospital’s cardiology systems capital budget in the future. The systems budget is next most likely to be managed by an IT/MIS department, either within the hospital (15.5 percent) or at a healthcare system level (14 percent).

 
IMV's "2010 Cardiology Information Continuum Report" is based on the responses from 200 department administrators, including cardiovascular services administrators, IT/MIS directors, C-PACS managers and radiology administrators in U.S. hospitals. The report, “The 2010 Cardiology Information Continuum: Present Access and Future Integration Strategies for Cardiovascular Image and Information Systems,” seeks to describe hospitals’ present access to cardiology PACS and CVIS.