One of the lesser used functions of many PACS systems is the use of a paperless radiology workflow. This page will discuss some of the things you should consider when trying to develop a paperless workflow for your Radiology department. The paperless workflow can shave time of the report turnaround time, a very important metric for the measurement of quality in any radiology department.

An analysis of documentation that travels throughout the radiology department turns up quite a few documents, the most common documents include:

Patient questionnaires for MRI

Contrast Reaction forms for CT

Consent Forms

Ultrasound Worksheets

Procedure Requisitions.

All of these documents become part of the patients record or get turned into the radiologists so that the study can be read. The radiologist who must wait to have documents in hand prior to reading the study loses time. This comes from the time that it takes a technologist to get the documents to the radiologist.

When a paperless solution is deployed, the radiologist will have those same documents in PACS when they open a study to be read and a quicker radiology report turnaround time can be achieved.

How the document scanning is deployed is a big decision in itself considering that you gain certain benefits and pay certain prices for either a integrated or 3rd party solution. Each solutions has advantages and disadvantages. These are shown in the table below. 

Once you figure the type of document scanning that you need, select it and then focus on the workflow. The typical workflow for the technologist and radiologist is seen in the flowchart below. 

It is up to the radiology department as a team to develop the best workflow with regards to the paperless solution. It is up to you as the PACS Administrator to make sure that all the people making the decision know the pros and cons of each choice. Sometimes the choice is driven by the functionality of the PACS system, other times it is driven by cost and even others are driven by radiology need, think about the choices wisely and pick the scanning solution that best fits your needs, but do pick one, you department can not afford to be paper driven.