How many CR plates?

I am often asked how many CR plates a customer should order with their new Directview CR unit. Everyone knows CR plates are expensive. Because of their durable design, Kodak plates are much more durable than competitor’s products, so each plate will typically last the life of the CR, so you don’t often have to replace them. But the number of plates needed really depends on a number of factors, including how many x-ray rooms you have, whether you do portable x-rays, if you do trauma, the processing speed of your CR, and the workflow within your facility.

For most single room x-ray departments with moderate volume, we typically recommend at least four 35 cm x 43 cm (14”x17”) plates and two 24 cm x 30 cm (10”x12”) plates. If you do many portable exams you may want two additional 14x17 plates to go on your mobile unit, keeping your main exam room stocked with plenty of plates to do any exam. If your CR is located close to your x-ray room, you can get by with fewer plates because you can go ahead and process each plate while you are working to move the patient for another view. Similarly, if you have two x-ray techs working at once on a patient, you can have one tech processing plates while the other tech handles the patient. In these cases, four 14x17 plates may be plenty for your workflow and handle all your needs.

If on the other hand your x-ray room is not directly adjacent to your CR unit, you may want a few extra plates so you can perform an entire exam without having to leave the exam room. In that case you may also want a Remote Operations Panel, since you need to “flash” each plate under the bar code reader to identify the type of image it is. Each CR plate does have a marker area where you can use a dry erase marker to flag the exam type, but it is faster to just pick the exam from the ROP and swipe the cassette under the bar code reader. Later you can just drop the cassette one by one into the CR without having to remember which image is on which cassette, or if you have a multi-loader CR, just drop all of them on at once for automated processing.

There is no set number of CR plates that are perfect for any one client. As you learn to use the system and adjust your workflow, you may find you need more plates, or in most cases, we have customers find they don’t need as many plates as they originally thought. Our recommendation is that if you have never used CR before, you probably won’t need as many CR plates as you might think. Purchase a quantity on the lower end of the estimates, yet budget for a few extra plates if you find after using the system that you need more than originally thought. Many times you will find you need fewer plates and can use that budgeted money for other things such as additional applications training!