Florida MIS Radiology: Diagnostic Imaging Services And Competitive Strategies

About Florida MIS Radiology

1. The MIS Radiology center has adopted the Focus generic business strategy, based on Porters’ competitive strategies. The hospital is focused only on a single business segment, which is imaging and radiology, with a small team. It does not, for instance, provide other forms of medical services such as prescriptions or surgery (Porter, 2008). The center has a target market of patients seeking imaging services as a way of helping diagnose their conditions and propose a suitable treatment method. The center serves a distinct group of clients with specialized needs for imaging services in the form of computerized tomography scans, nuclear medicine, MRI, ultrasound, and X -rays, as well as fluoroscopy and radiography

2. The three main competitors to Florida MIS radiology include Bayview Radiology, the National Imaging Specialists, and SDI Diagnostic Imaging. The criteria used to select these three ( Bayview Radiology, the National Imaging Specialists, and SDI Diagnostic Imaging) (‘Bayview Radiology’, 2018; (‘National Imaging Specialists’, 2018; ‘SDI Diagnostic Imaging’, 2018) as competitors to Florida MIS radiology include the scope of their business and their location. All the three are located in the same geographic region as Florida MIS, meaning that they compete for the same clientèle in the context of geographic proximity. Importantly, they all provide the same niche specialized services to customers (radiology and imaging) as described in their websites and their mission, vision, and goals.

3. The competitors also use the Porters’ Focus generic strategy in which they are focused on a niche target market and their market mix has been tailored specifically to the narrow market segment (Porter, 2008) of other hospitals and medical centers around Tampa that will require these highly specialized services but do not have, or want to invest in the hardware and resources to offer these services. RIS greatly improve efficiency; for example, with RIS, EHR information is easily provided to radiologists for effective and fast decision making as RIS provides decision making tools as is the case for National Imaging Socialists that offer imaging services to a number of hospitals and medical centers in Tampa area and beyond (‘National Imaging Specialists’, 2018). RIS improves quality of health care and gives medical centers that use them a favorable market position while improving patient safety (Raeisi, Ehteshami, Kasai, & Yusofi, 2014); SDI Diagnostic has been lauded by customers for quality of service and care (‘Yelp’2016). An RIS improves rapid turnaround time (RTT), a commonly used quality metric that measures time to medical reporting from completion of an exam (Chew & Relyea-Chew, 2008). Customer reviews depict Bayview as having a very short RTT and patient satisfaction (‘Yelp’, 2015).

4. At present, the Florida MIS strategy is not easily achievable, given the competitors’ advanced information systems and their lack of a sufficient RIS. Florida MIS will be able to achieve its goals and objectives by investing in state of the art information systems since the modern radiology unit is centered around efficient information and data flows between the RIS and the PACS (picture archiving systems) as well as voice dictation systems and Electronic health Records (EHR) (Towbin, Perry, & Larson, 2017; Nance Jr, Meenan, & Nagy, 2013). For instance, in a study by Olisemeke, Chen, Hemming, & Girling (2014) the authors established that RIS greatly enhances service delivery quality in improving the waiting times for patients in clinical radiology departments. The NHS has seen marked improvements in efficiency and cost reductions by implementing radiology information systems (‘Health Care Conferences UK’, 2017). According to Rubin (2011), informatics and information systems are the best ways to improve quality in radiology services.

5. Having a comprehensive RIS (radiology information system) will ensure EHR information can be accessed easily and can be digested and effectively used by the center; medications can be ordered for digitally and only relevant data is presented. Further, the center will be able to perform imaging on patients and have them updated to their EHR records instantly for further action by doctors and other care givers. The RIS will seamlessly link the center to other medial services providers and increase their market share, footprint, and collaboration; these will ensure the center achieves its mission, goals and objectives (and even exceed them). Mount Sinai medical center implemented a radiology system based on information systems and succeeding in enhancing clinical decision making in patient care (Mendelson, 2013). An evaluation of four benchmark institutions established that information technology systems were efficient at improving efficiency and quality of service delivery, including in radiology services while reducing costs (Agha, 2014). Ranschaert (2016) established that information technology can revolutionize radiology services, making service delivery efficient, cost effective, and linking care providers to ensure high quality services.