Author: aslocal

Dr. Michael Ruma, MD, MPH, FACOG is a Maternal-Fetal Medicine Specialist for Perinatal Associates of New Mexico, a leader in outstanding high-risk pregnancy care. Watch as he shares how AS Software helped his practice grow and thrive while saving valuable time previously spent on ultrasound documentation.  

Challenge

Manual Fatigue and Reporting Burdens 

Without an automated ultrasound reporting system in use, clinicians at Perinatal Associates of New Mexico were limiting time with patients to manually type ultrasound reports and locally print them. The inefficient ultrasound documentation process was a large time burden hindering growth at the practice. 

Solution

Reporting Efficiency and Automation 

Dr. Ruma engaged AS Software to help drive efficiency by automating and organizing the reporting and review process: 

  • Allowing all images to be easily accessed remotely, from anywhere in the world 
  • Efficiently creating high-quality, succinct reports for referring providers that are easy to read 
  • Quickly faxing and sending information through integration with Greenway EHR
Quote

“A dramatic amount of growth happened over the last decade because AS Software allows us to be highly efficient and organized, with great connectivity to electronic medical records.”
Dr. Michael Ruma
President, Perinatal Associates of New Mexico

Results

Increase in Patient Study Volume with Decreased Ultrasound Documentation Time 

AS Software automation significantly reduced the time required to create an ultrasound report from 5-7 minutes to 30-60 seconds. This efficiency enabled the practice to expand services, accommodate more patients, and establish additional offices and satellite sites. In the first year alone, the practice increased its study volume while reducing documentation time by 86%*.

Quote

“We were able to move through the day faster and more efficiently, which allowed us to see more patients and ultimately achieve financial improvement,” noted Dr. Ruma

In the first full year of using AS Software, Perinatal Associates of New Mexico experienced a 23% increase in patient volume, resulting in a $315,000 increase in practice revenue.

Dr. Ruma and the team at Perinatal Associates of New Mexico continue to partner with AS Software to optimize their healthcare practice, achieving significant improvements in staff efficiency, business growth, and patient outcomes.

Learn more about reducing ultrasound documentation time with automation: Get a Demo 

*This percentage is determined conservatively by taking the higher end of the initial timeframe—7 minutes, or 420 seconds—and comparing it to the higher end of the post-automation time of 60 seconds. By subtracting the post-automation time from the pre-automation time, dividing by the pre-automation time, and multiplying by 100, we find that each report now takes 360 seconds less to complete, multiplying savings across each report and significantly increasing the practice’s efficiency.

While very rewarding, diagnostic medical sonography can be a demanding career. With varied and long hours, time spent on your feet each day, and patients that can be highly anxious – there are many stressors to navigate. 

When the number of completed scans expected increases, and there is too little time to spend with patients, sonographers can experience chronic stress that, when unrelieved and unmitigated, causes career burnout. This can be difficult to overcome and affect the quality of patient care provided. 

“Decreasing burnout by decreasing the number of chronic stressors in the workplace should   improve the quality of scanning examinations, increase the quality of patient care, improve employee satisfaction, restore employee commitment and professional values, and decrease absenteeism and turnover.” (Journal of Diagnostic Medical Sonography) 

We’ve compiled these tips and advice from teachers, sonographers, and industry influencers to help sonographers, both new and experienced, remain confident and focused every day and for each ultrasound. Read on for tips for sonographers:

Communicate Effectively 

Each interaction you have matters, and everyone in the medical field needs to have good communication skills.  

Patients experience a range of emotions, and it can be difficult to navigate questions and anxiety regarding their exam. Talking points can be worked into the protocols within your department, such as explaining to an expectant mother that you need to perform your study and measurements and then you will show her the baby. By setting expectations for the scan up front and practicing how to communicate effectively and while maintaining composure and positivity, you will have a better understanding of how to handle each situation with effective boundaries and support. 

As a sonographer, you should be able to communicate calmly and clearly with your patients, while also communicating concisely and professionally with your peers, teammates, and physicians. Practice being the best communicator you can be, and make sure to be fully present and engaged while showing empathy for your patients.  

The better your communications skills become, the more success and fulfillment you’ll find in your daily interactions. 

Know Your Technology 

At each ultrasound appointment you have that one opportunity to get the best images you can. You need to know your technology and knobology backwards and forwards, so you make the most of your time to observe and capture the images you need.  

If you find yourself having issues or trouble with any of the systems you use, make sure to advocate for yourself and leverage your technology provider’s resources to solve issues swiftly and effectively.  If you feel at any time that you need more technical support or are experiencing issues, don’t hesitate to ask for the training and assistance that will help you gain more confidence in your technology. 

The more you know and trust your technology, the more you can confidently focus on patient care. 

Practice Self-Care and Work-Life Balance 

To show up fully at your workplace, with confidence, starts with how you take care of yourself throughout your daily routine. Sonography can be hectic, with busy days and lots of hours on your feet. Make time to check in with yourself so you can be prepared for the responsibilities of each day: 

  • Seek support to vent your challenges and frustrations, such as a support group or the buddy system.  
  • Get as much rest as you can. Practice giving your body a break, even for short periods of time…don’t let that pumpkin spice latte go cold! 
  • Invest in your emotional well-being. Addressing your mental health can go a long way in alleviating stress. 
  • Find a mentor. A trusted advisor can help guide you through important career decisions  

The better you take care of yourself, the better you can care for your patients. 

Always Keep Learning 

As a sonographer, you’re never done learning – even after you graduate. Not only is medicine constantly evolving, but medical imaging is advancing very fast as well. New and upgraded equipment, better techniques, and innovative best practices come each year.   

There is always room to grow, and you can stay ahead of the curve and remain confident in your knowledge and abilities by immersing yourself in consistent and dedicated learning. 

There are many professional organizations and resources available, such as this helpful list from the American Registry from Diagnostic Medical Sonography. 

Remain committed to your continuing education, and you’ll find continued success as a knowledgeable, prepared sonographer. 

To learn how the right software can help sonographers work more efficiently, schedule a demo.

More resources for sonographers:

Sonographers’ Wellness Forum On-Demand

Sonographer Pain and WRMSDs

7 Expert Tips from the Sonographers’ Wellness Forum

When choosing the right ultrasound structured reporting software, there are many important questions to consider as you evaluate each vendor's features and benefits.

In the Buyer's Guide, you will get:

  • The top four areas to consider
  • Key goals and questions
  • A list of key tech features

Download now to ensure you choose the best-fit software for your organization.

The transformation of healthcare is creating many benefits for both patients and clinicians, including: 

  • Delivering quicker access to patient data 
  • Removing physical barriers to care and communication 
  • Empowering patients to take a more active role in their health 

Enhanced technology leads to the necessity for more expertise and new capabilities; for clinicians and IT teams it can feel like there is always another escalated strategy to implement, another manufacturing update, a new portable device or application to connect, another system to learn, and even more integrations to ensure. 

“The largest challenge the healthcare industry faces when it comes to adopting new technology is the initial error rate. Generally, new technological products require iteration before they’re sufficiently reliable. This iterative process can be painful, potentially resulting in inaccurate predictions and inappropriate recommendations.” (Forbes Technology Council) 

As new applications, digital tools, and Health Information Systems are innovated, disparate network structures and piecemeal solutions take a toll on user experiences and operational processes. 

Think of the slow, frustrating rise of the Electronic Health Record and the difficulties of interoperability that have had massive impacts on data sharing capabilities and patient and clinician experiences. Innovation is key, but how can administrations and IT professionals ensure they are filling in gaps as technology advances throughout healthcare?

While standardization is strategized and best practices become more widely understood and utilized, technical support resources have become one of the top gauges for reliable usage and adoption. 

Two of the main focuses in effective Health Information Technology are to ensure: 

Correct Usage: Clinicians are able to input and access all data accurately and timely, capturing patient records and reporting visit information. 

Proper Data Flow: Data is managed seamlessly through interconnected systems — transferred and stored securely in the right systems in the right format. 

Proper IT support is a major factor in achieving these goals. With access to reliable support from an experienced team: 

  • Clinicians are onboarded to technology and receive the proper training to feel confident in all features and tools. Any technical issues or questions are addressed in a helpful and timely manner by the support team. 
  • Systems are built to meet the unique interoperability requirements of the organization. All needed upgrades and incoming system integrations are securely developed and addressed by the support team.

When the daily stress of a clinician’s workflow is exacerbated by a potential bug or an error, do they know who to call? Do they have access to resources to fix the problem promptly? How much will it affect their daily productivity? What impact will it have on the quality of patient care they can provide? Or is that error something that would have been prevented with proper maintenance and upgrades? 

A professional, helpful support team alleviates these burdens and helps clinicians meet innovation with confidence.  

As Dr. Porter said in his success story, “medicine is changing all the time.” In order to adapt, It’s the responsibility of the healthcare organization to ensure that they are partnering with reliable organizations that provide technology support. 

To learn how we partner with customers to provide expert IT support from implementation to beyond, request a demo. 

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AS Software offers structured ultrasound reporting and image management ultrasound solutions that help healthcare organizations accelerate workflows, drive productivity, and enhance care:

  • Reducing errors and liability with automated, intuitive features
  • Increasing referrals and patient volume with easy-to-generate, comprehensive reports
  • Improving employee satisfaction and retention with better collaboration and communication

Manage ultrasound studies in one seamless application for reports and images, built in a centralized, secure cloud environment.

Comprehensive Reporting

  • Standardized documentation made simple
  • Faster report completion and quicker access to information
  • Automate key terms and actions with custom dictionaries and templates

Powerful Data Tools

  • Intelligent data mining and statistical analysis
  • Comprehensive library of custom reports
  • Easy data entry and review

Seamless Integrations

  • Vendor-neutral interfaces built with ease across modalities
  • Download the info sheet to learn more about our tailored, centralized reporting platform designed for OBGYN, MFM, Vascular, and General Ultrasound departments.

Streamlined Viewing

  • Easy-to-read, structure format links directly to ultrasound images
  • Unique interface removes endless toggling and multiple windows
  • Comprehensive DICOM image management

Enhanced Billing Capabilities

  • Auto-drop CPT and ICD-10 codes to satisfy orders and charges in your EHR
  • Improve charge reconciliation and reduce rejected insurance claims

Superior Customer Support

  • Fast, reliable day-to-day support delivered on-demand
  • Detailed project coordination and implementation plans

Enhancing patient care across specialties

Women’s Health

General Ultrasound

Vascular

Smart and scalable solutions to fit your organization

Small to mid-size practices and labs

Large health systems and complex enterprises

Multi-site facilities

Download the Info Sheet

Video Captions:

“In healthcare’s complex ultrasound environment, providing quality care requires efficient technology that communicates effectively.

But there are many disparate workflows to navigate and connect for accurate ultrasound documentation and diagnosis.

To make the most of your investments, and to bridge the gap between departments, existing technology, and unstructured data, you need:

  • Reporting customized for your specialty
  • To seamlessly integrate with your environment
  • And reliably exchange data and images

So your team can remain focused on patient care.

With ultrasound reporting and image management solutions from AS Software, you can:

  • Access ultrasound images and reports anywhere, anytime;
  • Reduce the time it takes to make confident decisions, faster, with fewer clicks
  • Deliver the information that referring physicians need in an easy to read, standardized format
  • And increase reimbursements while ensuring billing accuracy

Empower your healthcare team and accelerate diagnostic imaging workflows with AS Software.”

Watch on Vimeo

To learn more about Ultrasound Image and Report Technology suited for you, get a demo.

As medical imaging has advanced, a variety of electronic systems and their various technology-based components, such as image archiving systems, ultrasound machines, ultrasound reporting systems and billing systems, have evolved within ultrasound network architectures.  

Each of these components communicate through a variety of interfaces, typically created by different vendor companies with limited collaboration, who focus on their individual components rather than seamless network connectivity. 

“Because this customization requires institutional willingness and resources, most ultrasound networks do not seamlessly provide the clinical information necessary to improve clinical care efficiency and quality.” (SMFM) 

To help facilitate better collaboration, clinicians, maternal-fetal medicine sub-specialists and network vendors, including AS Software, were brought together by the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine Clinical Informatics Committee to establish best practices and a better understanding of obstetrical ultrasound network architectures, now published by the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology in a special statement. 

Here is a summary of the best practices collaboratively provided for seamless prenatal ultrasound network connectivity: 

1. Use a generalized approach to order design for more clinical flexibility 

There are unique challenges to order design for prenatal ultrasounds due to the frequent need for mid-study adjustments in obstetrics.  

The two most common approaches are to use multiple individual procedure-based orders, or to use a few generalized orders with embedded procedural options. 

While each approach to order design has its limitations and may depend on unique workflows, the ideal approach is typically a generalized one. In this approach, a handful of high-level orders with procedural specificity selected within the body of each order are used. A conditional request can also be embedded based on the study results, and even extend to consultative services. 

This will give greater clinical flexibility, so clinicians can adjust as needed without requiring new orders. 

2. Establish a straightforward data standard to improve communication 

Although there have been standards for formats of communication, like HL7 and DICOM, the content and clinical format of obstetrical data hasn’t had a standard for how it’s transmitted across systems.  

Depending on the individual vendors and design of each component, there are many variations of how data transfer and format is customized through interfaces — leading to varying capacities and complicated translations of each data point that make it difficult for practitioners to effectively leverage data.  

By standardizing ultrasound data transfer and improving consistency, clinicians will have increased analytical capabilities and access to discrete obstetrical data, and communication will be improved between vendors.  This straightforward integration is also less costly for IT professionals. 

3. Optimize billing with search functionality and integrations 

ICD-10-CM and CPT are the standards for coding in ultrasound workflows, but clinics vary on how they send this information and some use paper order sets.  

All requested procedures, associated diagnoses, and indications are best sent via HL7 order entry message to an ultrasound reporting system (URS). The URS should have search functionality for CPT and ICD-10-CM codes, and automatically populate necessary sections of study reports. 

All billing and coding systems should also seamlessly integrate with health information systems; and study procedure and diagnosis codes should automatically populate for final review. 

As imaging technology continues to advance, so will the technology-based components supporting it. These best practices will help both providers and vendors ensure their network  and its interfaces are structured effectively for better communication and more standardized data transfers, relieving burdens placed on healthcare systems. 

To read more about best practices for ultrasound network connectivity, read the entire special statement in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology or download a PDF on the Society of Maternal-Fetal Medicine site. 

To help better understand your organization’s electronic systems and how they could communicate more effectively, schedule a consultation here. 

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aslocal

From the start of AS Software to now, we’ve had the same goal

AS Software began its journey in 1991, specializing in “computerized patient record systems” designed to help healthcare administrators and physicians eliminate paper-based processes.  

The goal was to provide state-of-the-art, sophisticated technology that allowed our customers to improve the quality of care they provided while enhancing their daily efficiency.  

As the digitized healthcare environment grew, the original product was refined and further developed into a more sophisticated, robust solution — always adapting with the needs of our client base. 

Everything we build begins with our relationships 

AS Software became a leader in ultrasound reporting and image management, thanks to customer relationships guiding the progression of the product.  

Organic growth driven by referrals led to additional successes in Women’s Health, directing the company into new General Ultrasound and Vascular sub-specialties, and set us on a course to keep expanding to adjacent markets. 

We’ve cultivated our brand naturally, now we want to express it  

This year we’re continuing to build our vision for what’s next with our customers by growing our stellar team and investing meaningfully in tools and talent that help us scale.  

We want our brand to always reflect the growth and identity we’ve been cultivating since 1991 and showcase a visual identity our team members and customers are proud to represent. That’s why we’re now excited to unveil our renewed visual identity and share how it was created.

We’re taking our presence to the next level 

Over months of planning and through a process of internal and external research and interviews, we laid out a foundation for expressing our brand values and unifying theme.  

Each new brand element ties into our brand expression as a practical and attentive “benevolent leader”, and brand personality as a supportive and reliable “protector” that helps customers with confidence and responsibility.  Our core purple color stems from this identity and symbolizes the wisdom, uniqueness, and stability of our company. 

Our new brand palette and logo are also a modern reflection of our purpose, to enable an efficient focus on patient care with technology that instills confidence and feels second nature, for a seamless workflow.  

Tying together these elements is our core visual gesture, the wave. Our brand wave is inspired by the sine wave visualization of an ultrasound.

I invite you to explore the new website and follow along with us on our journey as we continue growing to better serve the ultrasound reporting and image management market.   

Thank you to the entire Studio Science team and the AS Software Marketing team, who spent many months bringing our new brand to life!  

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