Fortius Clinic

As a rapidly growing organisation focused on high performance, the Fortius Clinic’s original PACS left a lot to be desired. In terms of key functionality, the system was unable to integrate with a RIS, which meant radiologists had to report through a separate system. In addition, it wasn’t compatible with Mac computers, which a large percentage of the consultants used.

Remote access to images was also a major obstacle, making it difficult for physicians to work from home, a different clinic or hospital, or when travelling abroad. The system had limited image transfer capabilities, which meant exams would need to be manually uploaded into their systems. Given their patients typically being accompanied by scans that were conducted at different locations across the U.K., adding them to the system was a time consuming, and, at times, complicated process.

But perhaps the most difficult challenge that Fortius faced with their original PACS was the system’s stability. With 50 surgeons operating across multiple sites, having their system go down for a couple of hours every week was a major issue. And not only did these events happen on a regular basis, the provider’s support team were unable to restore service in a reasonable amount of time.

Recognising that a change was needed, Fortius Clinic began exploring options and discovered IntelePACS upon recommendation from their patient management system provider.

Through their IntelePACS deployment, clinicians have access to images at any time, from any location, while Intelerad’s Physician Portal allows referring physicians to keep a close watch on real-time order status through the patient activity dashboard and receive results notifications and access to reports through their mobile devices. 

A year after deploying IntelePACS, Fortius has already seen significant improvements to their operations. For starters, the system has been extremely reliable with zero instances of the system going offline, which has helped ensure smooth operations while improving productivity. In terms of radiology workflow, Fortius has seen vast improvements since deploying IntelePACS. In part, this comes from streamlining how studies are allocated, as well as enabling the clinic to have reports structured to meet their specific needs.