Children’s Hospitals Collaborate and Share Diagnostic Images Using XiFin ProNet to Ensure Timely Medical Treatment for Neglected and Abused Children

Peer Review and Advanced Clinical Workflow Helps Victims of Child Abuse

March 08, 2016 09:00 AM Eastern Standard Time

SAN DIEGO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–XiFin Inc., the healthcare information technology company revolutionizing the business of healthcare diagnostics, today announced that two leading children’s hospitals and affiliated clinics—Penn State Hershey Children’s Hospital and Midwest Regional Children’s Advocacy Centers at Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota—have successfully implemented XiFin ProNet™ to facilitate a collaborative, multi-disciplinary approach for the prevention, investigation and treatment of child abuse and neglect for pediatric patients.

“XiFin ProNet has allowed us to bridge the gap between rural providers and national experts in the field by ensuring quality care for all children impacted by abuse”

XiFin ProNet is a cloud-based collaboration and clinical data management solution for clinicians and diagnostic service providers, enabling the exchange and management of key images, data and reports to aggregate patient and diagnostic information, optimize collaborative workflows across and between enterprises, and facilitate peer and case review, quality assurance, consultation and treatment planning. XiFin ProNet TeleCAM is a specialized application, built using XiFin ProNet technology, designed specifically to support primary care for pediatrics.

“It is very gratifying to work with these leading children’s hospitals to provide collaborative, care management solutions focused on improving the diagnosis and treatment of abused and neglected pediatric patients,” said Patricia Goede, PhD, VP, Clinical Informatics at XiFin. “By connecting disparate providers across disciplines and geographic areas with both text-based and visual diagnostic content, we can vastly improve quality, time to diagnosis and outcomes for abused children.”

For child abuse and neglect cases, the ability to share sensitive and sometimes life-saving data and images in a multi-disciplinary team environment can be critical. With XiFin ProNet TeleCAM, data and images (including clinical photos, radiographs, and whole slide pathology images) from different modalities are brought together in an optimized workflow, where multiple clinicians can access and conference in real-time to accelerate decision making, facilitate consultation, increase productivity and reduce costs.

Penn State Hershey Children’s Hospital implemented ProNet TeleCAM because its unique architecture overcomes the typical barriers of user adoption and workflow efficiency through delivery of single-copy, centralized image sharing and collaboration, coupled with a specialty-driven experience to meet the remote communication and collaboration needs of its rural providers and patients.

“XiFin ProNet TeleCAM is the only HIPAA compliant web-based tool that includes clinical workflow for child abuse cases,” stated Lori D. Frasier, MD, Division Chief of Child Abuse Pediatrics at Penn State Hershey Children’s Hospital. “ProNet TeleCAM has the power to improve the care of abused children and spread expertise across geographic areas. Children who suffer from child abuse should have access to the same expertise in rural communities as in medical centers with specialists. ProNet TeleCAM closes the gap for rural communities.”

Participating physicians report a 32% reduction in time to diagnosis, due largely to the ability of the system to generate email notification to initiate multidisciplinary team meetings, improved quality and completion of patient records and collaborative efforts to ensure accurate diagnoses.

Midwest Regional Children’s Advocacy Center (MRCAC) at Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota, facilitates and manages expert peer review processes for specialty pediatric services across the nation. In addition, MRCAC hosts an anonymous expert review program for child abuse providers to improve diagnostic accuracy and photo documentation of medical evaluations. MRCAC selected XiFin ProNet TeleCAM to serve as the collaboration and peer review platform to support its anonymous expert review process across geographically dispersed institutions, as well as to collect data to be used for ongoing training, education and quality assurance.

Clinicians who participated in case review and quality assurance programs powered by XiFin ProNet TeleCAM improved their diagnostic accuracy over time by decreasing the incidence of misclassifications, avoiding false positives and improving overall case interpretation. Eighty two percent of participating medical providers indicated that the program has increased their diagnostic skill base.

“XiFin ProNet has allowed us to bridge the gap between rural providers and national experts in the field by ensuring quality care for all children impacted by abuse,” stated, Kori Stephens, MPH, MRCAC Project Director. “Many of our providers rely heavily on this system, and have expressed gratitude for the honest and important feedback they’ve received to improve their practice. Having an easy, secure, on-line platform makes this best practice much more accessible to those who would otherwise be at a loss.”

About XiFin

XiFin is a healthcare information technology company that leverages diagnostic information to improve the quality and economics of healthcare. The company’s health economics optimization platform is a connected health solution that facilitates connectivity and workflow automation for accessing and sharing clinical and financial diagnostic data, linking healthcare stakeholders in the delivery and reimbursement of care. To learn more, visit www.xifin.com or follow XiFin on Twitter and LinkedIn.