Cardea Technology’s Bone Densitometry Blog

This posting is part 1 of a 3-part series describing BoneStation and how it can ease the burden by reducing costs, saving time, and improving reporting quality.  Here we focus on cost reduction, while keeping in mind that time, money and quality are connected.

Of course, cost savings will depend on your practice. In this blog, we bring your attention to the case study done by Dr. Rosen at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where the cost per report were reduced by 60%.

Bone Densitometry practices operate under increasing pressure to perform with less. Challenges abound, including overloaded staff, complex workflows, reporting errors, and of course low DXA reimbursement.

Performing precise and accurate DXA measurements takes effort.  DXA machines are sensitive devices requiring correct calibration and patient positioning. Capturing patient history properly and providing consistently quality reports demand much energy and focus. Let’s not forget that DXA stands out as an imaging modality (compared to regular X-Ray, MRI, or Ultrasound) because the output consists of images and numerical values.

The cost savings, in the case of Dr. Rosen, came from:

• Reduced labor cost:
  • no need to pull charts because BoneStation provides all prior scans during review.  Both the prior scan images and numbers are available.
  • no need to dictate and transcribe
• Cost savings due to space savings – Paper storage of charts no longer needed because all scans (images & date) are stored electronically in BoneStation.  
• Cost savings in materials, such as ink and paper, because no need to print reports.  Reading physicians have access to all scans (image & data) in BoneStation.
• Time is money: reading physicians interpret scans faster because current and prior scans show up side by side during review (no extra step or click needed).
• Subtle yet important costs are those associated with errors in reporting numerical values such as the T-scores. Such costs can impact the entire hospital. BoneStation eliminates such errors since the values are directly extracted from the DXA software.

Even though we focused on the economic aspect, we must highlight a powerful triple outcome resulting from the ability in BoneStation to observe prior scans and current scans side by side: it not only saves money, and time, but also increases quality. The fact is that still today, many readers do not take the time to check prior scan images and numbers, even though this is important in order to check for consistent patient positioning and analysis.

We hope this short blog helps you as you assess or reassess your current bone densitometry process. We invite you to learn more by clicking here: case study by Dr. Harold Rosen of BIDMC.

Sylvie Bokshorn

BoneStation has produced more than a quarter million reports and has proven to be reliable solution for BMD reporting.  Customers such as MGH, Swedish Medical Group, Emory and others enjoy higher throughput at lower costs.