The use of mobile imaging in healthcare continues to evolve at a rapid pace as more medical professionals recognize its numerous advantages. This changing landscape in mobile imaging is steeped in a fundamental notion that medical images are a foundational component in the healthcare industry; they are used to diagnose diseases and serve as the basis for developing treatment strategies. Technical barriers have been broken down thanks to the use of portable, visual communication devices and dedicated imaging software that allow doctors instantaneous access to visual data inside their own facilities.
Allow us to explain how simple and easy it has become for mobile imaging to accommodate home health care and hospice recipients, made especially noteworthy when taking into account that such home health and hospice exams are covered by insurance plans.
Some Fundamentals
Mobile imaging services are becoming increasingly available to healthcare facilities of long-term nature, home care recipients, nursing homes and hospice agencies in addition to rehab hospitals, correctional institutions, professional sports franchises and occupational medicine practices. Superior service providers are available around the clock with board-certified radiologists performing the interpretation of the exams and preliminary reports forwarded within hours. Some mobile imaging service providers, such as Alpha One, also offer quality assurance programs that are custom-created to meet each facility’s individual demands.
The Home Health and Hospice Factor: What You Should Know About Mobile Imaging
The primary goal when it comes to dealing with the health, safety and comfort of older/elderly patients is a familiar environment—that is, ensuring the patient is as comfortable as possible in the environment he or she is most familiar. Mobile imaging tactics, with regard to home healthcare and hospice approaches, typically focus on surroundings. We achieve this by bringing the testing to the patient. Mobile imaging personnel can perform fast, quality exams while keeping the patient in the care of the trusted facility and in the comfort of his or her usual surroundings. This also helps keeps the patient in your care and out of the hospital setting.
Available mobile services for patients in home healthcare or hospice facilities often include:
- X-rays (chest, lower/upper extremity, spine, pelvis, head)
- EKGs
- Ultrasounds (venous, arterial, ECHO, abdominal, aorta, carotid, ABI and more)
Online RIS (Radiology Information System), such as the type utilized by Alpha One, provides access to a patient’s images and reports on a 24/7 basis, with results typically received within 30 minutes for a stat order and one hour for routine exams from the time the test was completed.
Some Final Thoughts
Mobile imaging is a great option for home healthcare programs and hospice facilities in a market being driven by pressures for reduction of reimbursement and consolidations within hospitals. Having a mobile solution enables the hospice facility or home healthcare system to bring quality, short- or long-term, cost-effective and convenient imaging solutions to patients that would perhaps not be possible otherwise.
Contact Alpha One Imaging to learn about the ways we encourage facilities to provide a higher standard of proactive, preventative patient care.