Speed Patient Care with Access to Point-of-Care Ultrasound Data 

Cardiac departments across the United Kingdom expanded their use of point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) to assess patients with confirmed or suspected COVID-19. As the pandemic abates, POCUS usage remains high, as departments harness the technology to triage echocardiogram waiting lists.

Collaborative Template Design

Change Healthcare Cardiology Echo™ provides a POCUS template to enable reporting and image aggregation via the Change Healthcare Cardiology CPACS/CVIS. Developed in partnership with our customers, the customisable template enables storage of image sets from hand-held ultrasound scanning devices through Echo gateways. This capability helps organisations streamline reporting for urgent inpatient scans and accelerate patient care.

The template can be used on the ward and reported by the sonographer or physician to document all Cardiac POCUS scans in their current workflow. It also enables collation of audit data both for internal use and for submission to transnational COVID Echo registries.

Triage Echo Patients - Level 1 Scans

The POCUS Template meets British Society of Echocardiography (BSE) guidelines for Level 1 scans and can be used as a triage report to help relieve congestion and streamline Echo throughput. Performing a basic scan with a simple report may suffice for a sizable percentage of patients, so the template can help reduce the strain on Echo department resources. Additionally, our web-based reporting platform, the Change Healthcare Cardiology CVIS, makes it easy to access Echo reports and images.

Improve Cardiology Workflow

For clinicians at Imperial College London, the template proved invaluable as they worked to meet the challenge of COVID-19.

“The Change Healthcare POCUS template was immeasurably helpful during the pandemic,” said Matthew Shun-Shin, Clinical Lecturer in Cardiology, Imperial College London. “It ensured that with the rapid expansion of POCUS, reporting quality was kept high. Furthermore, it has allowed for prioritisation of waiting lists post-COVID and has aided our submissions to transnational COVID echocardiography registries.”

Change Healthcare Cardiology Echo™ helps National Health Service hospitals improve clinical decision-making and maximise productivity with an intuitive workflow designed to streamline the management of transthoracic (TTE), transoesophageal (TOE), and stress echocardiograms for both diagnostic and therapeutic use. The Change Healthcare Cardiology™ portfolio provides invasive and non-invasive solutions for the end-to-end management of images, reports, and waveforms, in addition to charge capture and inventory management.

Connect with Change Healthcare during the BSEcho2022 Annual Conference to learn more.