by
Lauren Dubinsky, Senior Reporter | December 11, 2014
From the December 2014 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
Bundy doesn’t know of any hospital with the system in an emergency vehicle, but he thinks it would be of great use. “I would imagine that in the small confines of that type of environment, having another cable draping across the fluid bags and everything else that’s connected to a patient on the way to the hospital having the wireless transducers would be an advantage,” he said.
Meanwhile, GE Healthcare released the dual-probe version of their pocket-size Vscan ultrasound in early August, which is designed to look like a flip phone. The company claims that it’s the only portable ultrasound on the market with two transducers in one probe.
“In the emergency department it’s all about being fast,” said Ajay Parkhe, general manager of primary care ultrasound at GE. According to GE, Vscan saves the physician time since they don’t have to change the probes and only takes 30 seconds to start-up.
Since most of the staff members in the department are not sonographers, GE designed the Vscan’s user interface so that someone without much ultrasound knowledge can use it. “If you’re not a sonographer, you can pick it up in 15 minutes and figure out the methodology,” said Parkhe.
GE has sold about 17,000 units globally and Parkhe believes that the pocket-sized ultrasound will become even more popular in the future, but he doesn’t think it will take over the larger console ultrasounds. Vscan is mainly designed for triage—when a patient comes into the ED with shortness of breath, the physicians can use it to determine whether their condition is serious or minor.
However, the console ultrasounds are preferred for the more complicated cases. “Once you come to the hospital, you want to do more complicated things—you need different probes and different measurement packages—and for that, you will have a place for the consoles,” said Parkhe.
CT in its prime
Even though there is a decline in overall imaging utilization right now, there appears to be an increase in imaging in EDs, according to a recent study published in the Journal of the American College of Radiology.
Researchers at Thomas Jefferson University used Medicare Part B Physician/Supplier Procedure Summary Master Files from 2002 to 2012 to analyze imaging rates. They found that CT use per 1,000 scans increased 159 percent.
CT first started out exclusively in the radiology department, but hospitals soon realized that the technology can serve an important role in their EDs, according to Siemens. It can be argued that many patients get admitted to the hospital because they need a CT scan.
