None of us could have anticipated the COVID-19 pandemic, and due to the pause on screenings, millions of mammograms have been deferred.
While there are many things we cannot control about the current situation—one thing we can control is how well our radiology practices recover once as lockdowns are lifted.
As reported last week by Entrepreneur, savvy business owners have already begun to employ plans that leverage AI to prepare for the new normal. Knowing how to prioritize and communicate with patients, innovate with technology to manage your workflow, and work with partners who can support your transition are three success strategies you can employ now to help you address what will be a dramatic increase in practice workload.
Communication It’s Women’s Health Week, and as radiology and breast centers reopen, some practices may communicate in waves, reaching out to their high risk patients first – perhaps calling in patients who were due for a recall or a six-month recheck in the past few months, patients previously diagnosed with breast cancer, women with close relatives who have a family history of breast cancer or who have had previous findings. In fact, some of these higher-risk patients may have already reached out to their radiology or breast center, concerned about their delayed mammograms.
Innovation In parallel, supporting radiologists and the entire team with information to better predict which cases need immediate attention can be easy. This is where innovation with artificial intelligence (AI) comes in. Integrating the CureMetrix AI-based mammography solutions into your radiology practice is one safe, extremely simple way to prepare for and manage the pending backlog.
Implementing cmTriage™ can help you get ahead of the surge. It uses a highly-trained algorithm to flag for radiologists which suspicious mammograms may need immediate attention. And it is the first and currently only FDA-cleared, AI-based triage solution for mammography in the U.S., making it the tool to help streamline your practice’s workflow, so you can give each patient case the time it deserves.
cmTriage can even process your prior cases to identify patients who may not have been flagged for recall or follow-up, but may be suspicious. Reaching out to patients identified by the AI algorithm in cmTriage as suspicious may be a good way to help drive potentially at-risk patients into your clinic. This may improve their outcomes and can have a positive impact on your revenue at a time when you are working to rebuild your practice.
For practices that want a tool to enhance the accuracy of their mammogram readings, studies have shown that CureMetrix cmAssist® may help radiologists improve their breast cancer detection rate by 27% on average without increasing recall rates. In these published studies, cmAssist has been able to find cancers up to six years before first detection, and reduce false positives by 69% -- which is significant as you recover and manage patient load.
The impact and study results that this technology can have in practice was shared last week at the AuntMinnie.com Virtual Conference. In case you missed it, you can view the two featured Webinar recordings here:
No AI-based radiology solution is worth your time, though, if it requires a weeks-long, complicated setup. Since our AI works with your existing PACS, installing CureMetrix solutions is a quick, easy process that can all be done remotely in a matter of days, not weeks.
Additionally, during this period of social distancing, CureMetrix is offering a no-cost implementation trial of its AI-based mammography solutions, so that you can have the workflow tools in place now to address the surge tomorrow.
Partnership As you have no doubt heard many times, we’re all in this together—but in the post-COVID world, none of us can move forward alone and we must rely on experts with tools and information that augment our expertise.
To streamline your recovery, we encourage you to take advantage of our no-cost implementation and no-cost service for the next 3 months to aid your practice.
The practices who recuperate quickly and successfully are the ones who plan and innovate. CureMetrix is your radiology partner in post-COVID recovery, and we’re with you every step of the way as you recover today and become stronger for the future.
We know your patients, your radiologists and your employees are counting on you and you can count on CureMetrix.
To learn more about our free trial, click the button below.