As a patient, few things are more frustrating than getting a CD of your medical images and not being able to read them when you get home. Even worse is having this happen when you’re trying to share them with another provider.
Debra Moulton ran into this problem back in 2013 when she had an MRI performed on her neck. She’d been suffering from persistent, severe pain and after numerous treatments like steroid injections and physical therapy, her doctor finally agreed to do an MRI. She was scheduled to see a neurosurgeon for a consultation and was told to bring a copy of the test on a disc. At home, she attempted to look over the results on the CD that her doctor provided. First, she tried to load them on her desktop computer, but had no luck. Next, she tried on her laptop computer, and still nothing. After several tries, she grew frustrated. As it turned out, the files on the CD were corrupt. She called her doctor’s office to see what they could do and learned she would have to get a new copy. Fortunately, the imaging center had one on file and quickly provided a free replacement since it wasn’t her fault that the disc was corrupted. Unfortunately, Debra encountered this problem again when she required a few more tests. Just as before, the doctor put the results on CDs. “It never fails,” she said. “Every time I tried to access the images from home or at another doctor’s office, I would have the same issues.”
Needless to say, Debra’s inconvenience, as well as the delay in her treatment, did not make for a great patient experience. She had to make multiple trips and phone calls to her doctor’s office to get new copies of her images, and in doing so, lost time and money. She also wasn’t able to get a diagnosis as quickly as possible, leaving her to endure her neck pain until the situation was resolved. These negative effects could have easily been avoided if her doctor used image sharing.
Another patient, Kelly Honsinger, had a mammogram that revealed a few spots that were suspect and needed to be checked out. The physician’s office she was referred to required a copy of her images before even scheduling an appointment; they wanted to examine the results ahead of time to determine if her situation called for a visit sooner rather than later. Her doctor did not provide images on a CD, but instead sent them by email.
Side note: anyone in healthcare that’s reading this right now is probably cringing because we all know this is a huge ‘no-no’ in terms of HIPAA compliance and patient privacy.
Alas, Kelly’s doctor emailed her the images and she was able to view them easily because they were in JPEG format; however, she was not successful in saving them onto a disc to send to the other provider, which was the reason she needed them in the first place. She ended up asking the doctor to send a DICOM file directly to her specialist, and luckily he agreed, but yet again, the patient found herself dealing with a hassle that was entirely preventable. In these circumstances, a delayed diagnosis could be truly detrimental to the health of the patient, especially if the spots on her mammogram turned out to be malignant.
To get a physician’s perspective on these challenges, I spoke with Dr. Sumeet Vadera, a neurosurgeon at the University of California. He explained, “Unfortunately, this occurs a lot more often than you might think. First, we always try to have our radiology colleagues pull up the images because the software that they use will occasionally work. If we still aren’t able to view them, I’ll ask that the patient try and get another CD from their provider, or in some cases, we’ll have to redo the studies. I try to avoid this as it is a waste of time and resources, but sometimes it’s the only option available.”
When asked if he had suggestions for other methods of sharing medical images he said, “I would tell patients if they receive a CD from any imaging department, that they go and try and open it at home. If they’re able to, I would suggest they save them onto a thumb drive and bring both the CD and thumb drive to any other doctor’s appointments that they have.” He added, “I think it’s important that patients have access to their health information and the ability to view their records, but more importantly, that they’re able to use this information effectively to allow for the most accurate diagnosis and thus the best standard of care possible.”
These stories represent just a few examples of the problems that can arise from sharing images on discs. See a demo of Vaultara’s on-premise solution to learn about a less cumbersome and more secure way to share medical images.
