PARCA plays key training role in nationwide PACS effort in Saudi Arabia

Over a 100 PACS administrators have undergone 

PACS Administrators Registry and Certification 

Association (PARCA) training by PARCA founder 

and OTech Imaging president, Heman Oosterwijk

 (standing left) and received Certified PACS 

Associate (CPAS) certification in Saudi Arabia. 

Image courtesy of Zainab Alalawi.

PARCA eNews – Nov. 14, 2016 – PACS not only improves efficiency and clinical decision-making but also shortens hospital stays, a study from Saudi Arabia has found, however challenges remain, particularly the time taken to find images, recurrent system downtime, and insufficient training.

The researchers wanted to assess the perceived benefits in quality of care of PACS among physicians and radiologists, and assess the perceived challenges of PACS implementation and adoption inside and outside the radiology department.

Saudi Arabia has a long-term plan to implement a nationally integrated PACS and imaging storage and retrieval network as part of its national health service. At present, PACS have been implemented in 89 Ministry of Health (MoH) hospitals in Saudi Arabia over the past 10 years, and plans to implement PACS across the country are gaining momentum. 

The cross-sectional descriptive survey at three of Ministry of Health (MOH) Hospitals in the Riyadh region, Saudi Arabia, involved two separate questionnaires sent to physicians and radiologists at the three hospitals. In addition to the questionnaire the survey included feedback as responses to open-ended questions. Content analysis was used to analyze the feedback under two themes: benefits or challenges.

The response rate was 46 percent (84/183) physicians and 88 percent (15/17) radiologists have participated in this study. The result showed that 70 percent physicians’ views affirms that PACS improved physicians’ efficiency. On the other hand, all radiologists who responded affirmed that PACS improved efficiency. 

Overall, radiologists’ views reflected more positive benefits of PACS than physicians. The main disadvantages reflected by physicians’ views of PACS centered around the difficulty in finding images, recurrent downtime and insufficient training.

Read more…