Today CVIS sits at the heart of cardiovascular care, uniting and propelling clinical, operational and financial success. CVIS is the compass and brain guiding workflow, data flow, decision-making and driving good outcomes. It is a GPS too for gaining data insight for clinical, operational and financial transformation.

State-of-the-art cardiovascular image and information systems obtain, analyze and share rich, consolidated data from department systems and applications across the cardiovascular service line. Build-as-you-grow is the norm, with single-vendor solutions across entire healthcare enterprises increasing in popularity thanks to the reduced complexity among workflow, IT and integration and omnipotent accessibility to data and tools across the enterprise.

CVIS standardizes practices, improving consistency in diagnosis and outcomes. Seamless access to data enables the delivery of high-quality patient care. It is IT, interfacing and integration services that surround all successful projects. Health systems and experienced vendors must work together to maximize implementation, integration, configuration, training and adoption.

CVIS provides a comprehensive view of each patient, with all images and information in one place, accessible anytime, from everywhere. User-centric, icon-based, task-driven customization helps physicians create an environment that reflects their individual working style to move quickly and easily across clinical applications and patients. Rich clinical summaries and contextual presentations are available at the point of care.

This is the connected cardiology that leaders agree they need, some have and many more are seeking, our survey respondents tell us. But how to get there?

Step one: Leadership 

Healthcare leaders tell us it’s the C-Suite and cardiovascular department heads leading the strategic charge around CVIS, with the C-level controlling strategy for 38% of facilities while CV department heads take the lead in 37%. The IT department controls CVIS decision-making in 11% of organizations, while physicians take the lead in 11%. Only 3% of CVIS decision-making is made by external consultants and others. Leaders also recognize the importance of physician input, with 76% saying they’re giving physicians more input in CVIS decisions to help achieve the Quadruple Aim and clinical objectives.   

Step two: Strategy 

The top capabilities organizations require in a CVIS reflect the top challenges and priorities of cardiovascular service line leaders. EMR integration tops the list, followed by physician productivity, revenue cycle management, image and report information sharing, collaboration and staff productivity. Continuing down the list, CV departments need procedure charting and reporting, image viewing, business analytics, scheduling and resource management and research.

Step three: Adoption 

Health systems report high performance marks in CVIS use, with 50% of survey respondents calling their facilities proficient, meaning partially integrated with most useful connections in place. About 12% describe themselves as advanced, with fully integrated data from all departments with connection to EMRs. Another 24% have a basic CVIS with a foundation in place but lack full integration. Most facilities (68%) have access to all patient records within their CVIS, while a little more than half (56%) can access images, measurements and calculations from the EMR. 

Step four: Standardization 

The cardiology IT landscape is complex. The majority of survey respondents (51%) tell us they have multiple CVIS from multiple vendors, while 14% have multiple systems from the same vendor. About 35% of respondent healthcare organizations have chosen to standardize on one CVIS across the health system, which leaders agree is the  
way forward.

Continuing the theme, some 55% of health systems have two to five hospitals with separate CVIS in place, while 19% have just one hospital with a separate CVIS. For 4% of health systems that number stretches to 21 to 50 and another 4% to more than 50 hospitals. The balance of health systems includes 13% with six to 10 hospitals with separate CVIS and 6% with 11 to 20 hospitals. There’s little surprise then that a quarter of health systems have plans in place to move to a centralized CVIS across the health system, while another 22% are considering consolidation.

Step five: Key Performance Indicators 

While hospitals and health systems have invested widely in vendor solutions for cardiovascular image and information management, reporting solutions are most often homegrown. When reporting clinical performance indicators, 40% of survey respondents tell us they utilize homegrown analytics, while 33% opt for vendor-packaged report solutions. About a quarter say they use their CVIS for reporting. Outsourcing is the choice for 13%. Homegrown is the most option for reporting clinical analytics indicators, but only edging vendor-packaged solutions by one percentage point (36% vs. 35%). CVIS is the choice for 24% of respondents, while 10% make use of outsourced reporting services. Cardiology needs these tools to look into data because they succeed and fail on a per-patient basis. Every case counts and needs to be analyzed.