The Role of the PACS Administrator in the Hospital - Assignment Example

The Role of the PACS Administrator in the Hospital Introduction Since inception, the picture archiving and communications system (PACS) has evolved from an engineering exercise in digital image management into a complete information system and manager of clinical workflow (Topex 120). Whereas PACS was at one time an independent component of the medical system, it currently processes information from various systems. Practically, every clinical discipline has incorporated digital radiology into their practices and PACS has emerged as a mission critical system not only for the department of radiology, but for the entire healthcare system. As the PACS has advanced in both function and capability, so has the role of the PACS administrator. Therefore, PACS administrators ought to not only manage workstations and configure user interfaces, but they have an added role of system architects, business analysts, and work flow engineers. Accordingly, PACS administrators play a critical role in defining workflows in radiology, enabling radiology workflows in the most appropriate technology, and re-engineering radiology workflows (Stut 92). To attain these responsibilities, it requires that the PACS administrators possess strong interpersonal skills alongside, project management, strong communication, healthcare standard skills and information technology. On the basis of these fundamental concepts underlying the concept of PACS technology, this paper accordingly seeks to explain the significant roles played by the PACS administrator within the hospital context. Most PACS administrators carry out their duties in highly disparate cultures within the healthcare environment and the corporate information technology. Based on this reason, the fundamental role of the most successful PACS administrator in such a clinical environment is to liaise between these two cultures. Consequently, PACS administrators need to develop and enhance an explicit communication platform with the highly technical network team and at the same time understand the diagnostic processes of the radiologist in order to help them with their hanging protocols. As suggested by Horii (35), it can at times be difficult if not impossible to have competency in both areas as opposed to having a sub-specialized mastery in one or the other. Therefore, PACS administrators striving to satisfy these roles frequently struggle to attain skill sets. The PACS administrator has an important role to play towards the patient by ensuring that that the PACS process finally results into treatment and diagnosis, specialty consultations through electronic networks, greater accuracy, and greatly advanced communication within the healthcare fraternity (NEMA 140). The PACS administrator ensures this through permitting the integration of imaging studies with voice recognition dictation systems and radiology information systems and diverse hospital information systems. In this view, through the assistance of the PACS administrator, PACS technology dramatically changes the flow of operations specifically for radiology technologists who have streamlined operations, therefore permitting to perform extensive patient information on the available data and provide needed care for patients, and as such spent considerably less time repeating studies, filming, handling paperwork, and making annotations (Choplin 55). The PACS administrators therefore play a considerable role in facilitating the working of radiologists who develop greater efficiency in the delivery of studies to respective reading rooms, and to computer work stations for the purposes of diagnosis and review. Importantly, PACS administrators play critical roles in increasing radiologist productivity and satisfaction by maximizing on efficiency, streamlining workflow, responding to the strategic goals, limiting medical errors, and ultimately increasing the quality of patient care (Ratib 49). A vital role played by PACS administrator includes monitoring of the data flow by ensuring continuity to make the workload of the radiologist even throughout the day. As noted by Lemke (122), it is not just PACS that need monitoring by PACS administrator, but also integrated interfaces and systems. The flow of work needs an integrated set of systems that require robust and flexible interfaces amid various applications. Therefore, PACS administrator is needed to know much about the flow of data between all systems that ultimately interrelate with the PACS or are at the end touched by the PACS (Bekker 140). An important role to be played by the PACS system is in ensuring data quality. This is an equally important responsibility of the PACS administrator. The PACS administrator ensures this through automating the flow of data through the applications and systems, removing the chances for keying and re-keying errors. Besides, it is the responsibility and role of any incumbent PACS administrator to translate data into diverse formats in the correct way so as to meet the requirements of various applications. The PACS administrator plays an important business role. This is more so with regard to picture thinking. The PACS administrator is the individual with the required business skills for running of the PACS team and he negotiates the thicket of cost and planning issues. PACS administrators manage workstations and servers for the PACS systems, and they ought to monitor the system, troubleshoot and solve problems, and manage image storage. Importantly, PACS administrator ensures quality control, security with regard to the data of patients and training of other team members in ensuring proper use of the system. With regard to this role, PACS administrators play the fundamental role of ensuring safety of the medical records in form of images of the patients. PACS administrators attain this through observing high ethical and professional standards. Finally, PACS administrators serve the important role of entering digital image data into the database or system. Conclusion PACS technology administrators play important roles within the clinical fraternity that include; daily data monitoring, management, troubleshooting, and backup. Besides, PACS administrators have an important role of working in coordination with the supervisors of imaging machines for example; magnetic resonance imagers, and CT scanners, as well as others on the radiology team to ensure both accuracy and quality of data. These roles played by the PACS administrators are important if efficient service delivery within various departments more so within the radiology department has to be attained. As discussed in this paper, the facilitation and liaison roles played by PACS administrators are essential within the healthcare system and most importantly within the radiology department. PACS administrators have been identified to be key decision makers and they play key business roles within any healthcare system. Therefore, it is important if not necessary for them to possess certain skills necessary to ensure efficient and effective service delivery within the healthcare system. Importantly, the trend that current technology follows requires a continual personnel training and network management that bestowed upon PACS administrators multifaceted responsibilities. Works Cited: Bakker A. Comparison of worldwide opinions on the cost and benefits of PACS. Dwyer III S.J. ed. 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