Automatic QA Correlation According to Dr. McDaniel, the lab experienced significant improvements in process efficiency once the PowerPath system was in operation. She says that there is almost no interruption to workflow now that the pathologists can order stains electronically, sign-out and track cases, and easily edit transcriptions. While these benefits are notable, the Quality Assurance Module is the part of the system that has made huge improvements. “The QA Module of PowerPath automatically picks up correlations, so we are getting much more data than we did before. We can thoroughly measure and report the quality of our process, which is a valuable way to distinguish our practice against other reference labs. Since hospitals rely on this information to evaluate reference labs, it is critical for our business,” she explains. IT Considerations & Improvements It’s not just the clinical component of the system that has been welcomed by Dahl Chase. From an information systems perspective, PowerPath also outperforms its competitors, explains Steve Mellor, IS supervisor. “The far less-demanding maintenance and the performance increase over our previous system cannot be beat,” Mellor says. “Our old system would slow to a crawl sometimes when it would near the 40-user limit, and we would also have to take it down for drive replacement.” PowerPath’s SQL platform enables Dahl Chase to run RAID 1+0 arrays without worrying about drive failures interrupting the system operations. The site is also able to perform multiple back-ups while the system is online, which has also been a great improvement, Mellor adds. Product Development & Service Priorities Although Dr. McDaniel admits that there had been a huge dip in customer service and product development with PowerPath under a different management team, she says that she has been impressed by the marked improvement since Elekta Software acquired the product in December 2003. “Elekta Software is initiating big projects and actually making things happen. The dedicated product management team is helping to make a good product even better by talking to customers and truly listening. There’s a positive energy and you can feel it,” she explains. Dr. McDaniel further noted that a recent customer support problem was addressed within one hour of filing the request. “The service representative not only corrected the error, but contacted me by phone to notify me that the issue had been resolved.” | Site Snapshot Location: | |||||
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