A COST-ANALYSIS OF COMPUTED RADIOGRAPHY AND PICTURE ARCHIVING AND COMMUNICATION-SYSTEMS IN PORTABLE RADIOGRAPHY

A total of 40,000 portable examinations are performed each year at Sha nds Hospital (Gainesville, FL), a 570-bed teaching hospital. Radiograp hs are obtained using a screen-film combination with the films digitiz ed for transmission to displays in four intensive care units. A cost-a nalysis of replacing screen-film with computed radiography (CR) integr ated into a filmless picture archiving and communication system (PACS) network was performed. Equipment requirements included two CR units, three high-resolution dual monitor displays, and an archive to store 3 months of image data. The capital costs were amortized over a 5-year period. Capital and operating costs of the proposed expansion to the e xisting PACS network, together with anticipated cost savings, were det ermined. The maximum data transfer rate for portable examinations was 150 MByte per hour and approximately 400 GByte of image data are gener ated each year. These figures were used to determine the hardware requ irements for handling the acquisition, transfer, and display of the im ages. Annual costs of the proposed expansion were about $220,000. Cost savings were achieved by elimination of film, including its handling by technologists/library clerks, and amounted to about $200,000 per ye ar. Copyright (C) 1996 by W.B. Saunders Company