Gunnison Valley Health

Gunnison Valley Health has been serving patients since 1938. They understand the needs of their patients and are committed to improving the health of the community by delivering truly exemplary healthcare services.

Summary

Gunnison Valley in Colorado is surrounded by mountains in every direction bringing in both a winter ski population and a Summer hiking population as well. They serve a population of over 16,000 in the winter and 50,000 in the summer. However, with many tourists heading home at the end of each season, sending imaging via CD for follow-ups with home physicians quickly became a burdensome and very expensive task. Particularly, during the winter, mailing a CD could take weeks if a snowstorm hit the region. Embracing the Intelerad #DitchTheDisk message with its young and athletic population, the marketing team was able to quickly spread the word regarding simplified electronic image-sharing. Today, imaging can be shared with patients and referring physicians in just a few seconds.

Some vendors only build tunnels that are convenient for them. InteleShare™ was willing to work with us and other institutions to make image exchange easy.

BRETT BRUCE, JD, MSRS Director of Imaging, Cardiopulmonary, Respiratory, Therapy & Polysomnography Services, Gunnison Valley Health

Image Transfer Across Mountains

Sharing imaging when your facility is surrounded by mountains is no easy feat. From winter skiers to summer hikers, and elk hunters, the population seen by the facility would often head home at the end of their respective seasons. It wouldn’t be long before a call would come in from a patient or physician wanting to see imaging that was taken at Gunnison. Imaging was mailed and shipped on CDs, a process that could take up to two hours of administrative time per day, wasted thousands of dollars per month, and ultimately, delayed patient care and satisfaction.

Today, using InteleShare’s, patients sign a consent form at the facility after an exam, and imaging is then emailed to them or their physician directly through a secure access link. One patient even found themselves in Germany, and within seconds, their imaging was shared with the German physician!

InteleShare also acts as a secure second layer of storage and disaster recovery for Gunnison providing the flexibility needed for instant access, flexibility, and scalability.

Patients told me, ‘I want something that isn’t 20 steps’. With InteleShare, it’s one step for them to have imaging access.

BRETT BRUCE, JD, MSRS Director of Imaging, Cardiopulmonary, Respiratory, Therapy & Polysomnography Services, Gunnison Valley Health

Referring Physicians

Imaging is the currency for growing referrals. Gunnison found that other vendors were only willing to help them share with certain institutions or within certain regions. They needed the flexibility to send and create automated workflows with high volume referring physicians and centers of their choosing. One local urologist had refused to work with Gunnison any longer due to a lack of imaging access. Today, Intelerad established an automatic workflow that routes imaging taken at Gunnison directly to the physician. Since then, the relationship has been reestablished and several other automated routing workflows have been created.

Ditch the Disk