Clinical routine operation of a filmless radiology department: three years experience

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Abstract
This paper communicates the operational implementation of filmless digital radiology in clinical routine, its feasibility and its effect on the radiology profession, based on the three years clinical experience from the filmless digital radiology department of the Danube Hospital, a major teaching hospital in Vienna, Austria, with currently 850 acute-care beds. Since April 1992 all radiological modalities are reported from the monitors of 16 reporting consoles in the radiology department. Images and reports are distributed by the hospital-wide network (Sienet, Siemens Medical Systems, Erlangen), and can be viewed on 60 display consoles throughout the hospital. Filmless radiology primarily is an efficient hospital-wide infrastructure to deliver radiological services along with other medical information, providing safe and fast access to this information anytime and anywhere, necessary for the conduct of the diagnostic and therapeutic task of patient care. In a comparative study of the Danube Hospital with the film based Rudolfstiftung Hospital in Vienna, we found a significant decrease of the mean patient length of hospital stay (1.99 to 3.72 days) that partially might be attributed to the implementation of filmless radiology.

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