Ultrasound has long been valued as a safe, cost-effective imaging modality. But in today’s healthcare environment, it has evolved far beyond its traditional role in obstetrics and gynecology. It’s now central to cardiology, vascular care, oncology, musculoskeletal medicine, and is increasingly used at the point of care in emergency and critical settings.

This shift is good news for patients — ultrasound is non-invasive, widely accessible, and produces results faster than many other imaging methods. But for health systems, the expansion comes with challenges. Growing exam volumes, more complex imaging datasets, and the migration of services into outpatient and ambulatory settings mean that traditional ways of managing ultrasound no longer scale.

The Problem with Staying Siloed

Despite these changes, many organizations are still managing ultrasound through fragmented, legacy systems. These disconnected platforms create operational drag at every level:

• Costs rise as IT teams maintain multiple vendor contracts and duplicate infrastructure
• Clinicians waste time toggling between systems or repeating studies when priors aren’t accessible.
• Compliance risks increase as reporting delays put organizations at odds with evolving interoperability mandates.
• Revenue is lost when manual charge capture and incomplete documentation drive denials and reimbursement delays

Remaining siloed is no longer just inefficient — it’s a strategic risk.

Industry Forces Accelerating Change

Several powerful forces are converging to make modernization urgent:

• Utilization growth: Imaging volumes are projected to rise by 10–14% over the next decade
• Workforce strain: Ultrasound exams in the U.S. increased by 55% from 2011–2021, but the number of sonographers grew by only 44%, leaving open positions rising by more than a third
• Regulatory pressure: The 21st Century Cures Act and FHIR adoption timelines are raising the bar on patient data access and interoperability.

For leaders, these trends mean one thing: ultrasound can no longer be treated as a departmental tool. It must be managed as an enterprise asset.

The Path Forward

Modernization doesn’t have to mean replacing everything at once. The most successful health systems start with clear governance and measurable targets — things like report turnaround times, first-pass clean claim rates, and percentage of priors retrieved at the point of care. They prioritize vendor-neutral platforms that work across EHRs, PACS, and devices, and they stage rollouts to prove value quickly