Group endorses outpatient standards

In an effort to decrease inappropriate use and the costs of healthcare resources, the National Quality Forum has endorsed eight national voluntary consensus standards to encourage the appropriate and efficient use of imaging procedures in outpatient settings. The standards were chosen by an NQF steering committee on outpatient imaging chaired by Dr. Mark Needham, CEO of Santa Monica Bay Physicians Health Services, and Dr. David Levin, chairman emeritus of radiology at Jefferson Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. They address such issues as encouraging appropriate mammography through a patient reminder system; reducing inappropriate use and patient radiation exposure by documenting when imaging studies are performed when few symptoms are present; and removing report categories that are unclear or ambiguous.

GE offers DICOM tutorial

GE Healthcare has introduced a three-day basic DICOM course for biomedical engineers, imaging technicians, and hospital IT personnel. The course was developed in response to customer demand for education about the Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine standard that has become the backbone for radiology IT, particularly RIS/PACS. The vendor-independent DICOM course will be available to all technical support personnel to help them install and configure new systems and improve workflow. In addition, it will help them troubleshoot issues related to medical image transmission throughout the healthcare enterprise, according to the company. The DICOM standard was created by the National Electrical Manufacturers Association to aid the distribution and viewing of medical images throughout hospitals and clinics.