Mar06 eBroadcast - Hoag Breast Care Center

Improved Patient Throughput

Since moving to the Hologic equipment, patient throughput has dramatically improved at Hoag. While exam times vary depending on the procedure, on one dedicated screening unit, the number of screenings performed in a day more than doubled, from 25 patients to 52. "That was our benchmark goal," says Dr. Levine, "to see if we could double our throughput on a single system. And we reached it very easily."

Reynaga points out that with digital, there is no need for films and processing, so the women who come to Hoag are in and out much faster. "Our average screening time is down to six minutes," she says, "and with digital, our repeat rate is way down, because we know right away if an image is too dark or too light."

Improvements in patient throughput have come without adverse affects elsewhere in the workflow.

"Some radiologists worried that digital mammography would dramatically increase the amount of time spent reading a mammogram." Dr. Levine noted. "This simply is not true. There is more information to interpret with digital but the improvement in quality outweighs the slight increase in image reading time."

Dr. Levine adds that digital makes a big difference when incorporating Computer Aided Detection (CAD). "Digital technology makes the integration of CAD a seamless process. With digital the process is totally automated. The images are available immediately, and the CAD results are almost instantaneous."

Improvements for Technologists

Besides the improvements in patient throughput and image quality, the switch to Selenia has brought about another change for the better, one that has come as a pleasant and unexpected surprise to the technologists on staff.

With the old analog systems, repositioning the arm for different views required the technologist to physically lift the tube from one side to the other. The Selenia system is fully automated. Positioning and repositioning of the imaging tube no longer requires the physical effort needed in the past.

The Making of a Great Partnership

Since the switch to the Selenia systems, Hoag Breast Care Center has become a show site as well as a Hologic test site for evaluating the latest software and system upgrades.

"Upgrades are continuous," says Dr. Levine, "and they are constantly improving the systems. Hologic has proven to be very open and receptive to ideas. Suggestions for improvements from doctors and technologists are quickly integrated into system upgrades."

"I can pick up the phone," says Dr. Levine, "and call the president of the company.and actually get him on the phone. You can't say that about many other companies. To me, that's the sign of a great company. Hologic really listens, and they really care."