Connecting RPMS to PACS and the radiologist

As part of our ongoing effort to educate customers on the steps needed to implement PACS, we are blogging about the planning and integration required for Citizen Potawatomi Nation Health Clinic (CPN) PACS implementation.

RPMS stands for Resource and Patient Management System. It was developed initially by the Veterans Administration and later enhanced by IHS and VA personnel. It is widely used throughout Indian health facilities.

Our first task was to contact CPN's radiologist, Dr. Watts in Edmond. In talking to Dr. Watts, he said we needed to contact his transcription company, Now Transcription, to discuss the integration. So we contacted Shelly Evans at Now Transcription. She said they use Infraware as their transcription solution, and Infraware supported HL7 integration. Shelly sent me the interface documents that Infraware needs to define their end of the interface.

The anticipated workflow is for CPN to enter an exam in RPMS, which will then trigger an order HL7 message. This message will be sent to the Carestream PACS system as well as Dr. Watts transcription service. This order will contain relevent patient and exam information.

Once the exam is complete, the images will be sent to the Carestream PACS, which will auto-forward those to Dr. Watts. He will read the images and dictate his findings. NOW Transcription will transcribe the report, Dr Watts will sign the report just as he does now, and the final report will be sent back to RPMS via an HL7 REPORT message. Once RPMS receives the message it will then be sent to the Carestream PACS so that physicians can view the images along with the reports.

We are working to confirm this workflow, get a final price from Infraware on their end of the Interface, and confirm all this can be done seemlessly. Stay tuned.