Automating Import and Reconciliation of Outside Examinations Submitted to an Academic Radiology Department

Although advances in electronic image sharing have made continuity of patient care easier, currently, the majority of outside studies are received on CD. At our institution, there were 9 full-time employees (FTE) at three locations using three workflows to manually upload, schedule, and process studies to PACS. As the demand to view and store outside studies has grown, so has the processing turnaround time. To reduce turnaround time and the need for human intervention, we developed an automated workflow to import outside studies from a CD to our PACS and reconcile them with an internal accession number and exam code.