Navix Diagnostix: Heart of the Matter
Visual Imaging
Written by Amanda Gaines   
Thursday, 31 January 2008
Navix Diagnostix: Heart of the Matter - Visual Imaging - Health Solutions - RedCoat Publishing
For this diagnostic imaging company, efficiency is important, but clinical expertise is imperative.

We understand how technology advances the healthcare industry, but how many of us consider the technologists behind the equipment? Fortunately, the people at Navix Diagnostix do, which means the hospitals and multi-specialty physician practices using its services can breathe a little easier.

Navix Diagnostix: Heart of the Matter - Visual Imaging - Health Solutions - RedCoat Publishing
Cheryl Ford, President and CEO
Founded in the late ’90s, the success of this Massachusetts-based cardiovascular diagnostic imaging company lies in the clinical expertise of each technologist it employs. “Very few companies have the training necessary to understand the cardiovascular market,” said Cheryl Ford, president and CEO. “Our technologists are appropriately credentialed and extensively trained to perform non-invasive vascular ultrasound, echocardiography ultrasound, and cardiac nuclear medicine to help our clients more effectively diagnose at-risk individuals early on in the clinical process.”

Navix also provides its clients with a risk-focused screening program to help them identify individuals most at-risk for peripheral arterial disease, one of the most under-diagnosed diseases in the US, which strikes patients whose minor aches and pains that may indicate more serious health problems. Navix also conducts field marketing to inform and educate referring physicians to help them identify patients who may benefit from a vascular ultrasound study.

“We’ve identified up to 30% of patients who came in for this screening as having some form of disease warranting further follow up,” she said. “We are providing risk-focused screening programs as an integrated part of a client’s cardiovascular service offering, being sure to fully educate our clients on the benefits for their patients and for themselves.”


Economic improvement
The clinical expertise of Navix technologists helps clients more definitively and quickly diagnose vascular disease for their patients, and it also improves the economics of its clients’ cardiovascular laboratories. In many cases, vascular ultrasound is looked at as the first step in a series of more definitive diagnostic tests to really understand where the disease might be and to what extent. Because Navix performs highly comprehensive exams, it can provide its physicians with enough information for them to intervene directly from the test result.

Navix Diagnostix: Heart of the Matter - Visual Imaging - Health Solutions - RedCoat Publishing
“Our clients are often able to quicken the pathway to patient diagnosis because they are getting enough information from the non-invasive lab,” Ford said. “And while these more comprehensive tests often carry a higher reimbursement than in a typical vascular lab, there is often less of a need for further confirmatory testing, such as an MRA (magnetic resonance angiogram), which can add substantially to healthcare costs, and also carry associated morbidity.”

Many private payors are starting to require laboratories to be properly accredited before they will reimburse, especially when dealing with physician practices. Navix provides the accreditation for clients’ labs, using three types of accreditation, the Intersocietal Commission for the Accreditation of Vascular, Nuclear Medicine, and Echocardiography Laboratories (ICAVL, ICANL, and ICAEL, respectively).

Each accreditation requires approximately 1,000 hours of initial training and up to 200 hours annually to maintain the accreditation. And in addition to providing lab accreditation, equipment, and appropriately credentialed technologists, Navix brings billing support to its clients to ease the pain and improve the process of dealing with payors. “We’ve gone into a number of sites where they’re billing incorrectly, not following up appropriately, and receiving a number of claim denials,” said Ford. “We have relationships with all of the payors because we work with them so often, which means we can help our clients streamline their billing processes.”

Navix also provides expertise on patient follow up. CMS has recommended care standards based on the type of surgery or intervention a patient received. Navix helps its clients optimize that patient follow-up based on those CMS care standards to optimize lab economics, as well as provide better patient care.
Automating expertise

Today Navix is focused on laboratory automation. As reimbursements for diagnostic imaging continue to shrink, clients want to improve their throughput. One way is to increase the number of patients going through the lab, which, according to Ford, is often the industry solution to making more money. But it’s not patient friendly, and may lead to ineffective testing.

To maintain its high level of specificity (exam results showing a true negative) and sensitivity (finding disease if it’s present), which are two indicators of technologist expertise, Navix is investing in automation that will tie all steps, from the scheduling through the exam, into an electronic format. The company is still in the planning phases of the automation process, with a few select vendors placed in pilot situations in a number of labs.

Even though automation is still in the planning phase, Ford has a vision of what the results will be. “The automation will include images and the ability for physicians to read and sign off on the final exam from any location, be it remote or in their offices,” she said. “Once that’s done, the data will flow into the billing system.”
Unlike hospitals struggling to incorporate a multi-faceted EMR, Navix’s systems are solely focused on the lab side, which means a streamlined and more efficient patient flow. More importantly, it means less paperwork and photocopying and more time for the technologists to focus on what’s truly important: the patient care and imaging process. “In our business, focusing only on operational efficiency smacks of ‘How can we jam more patients through than you can?’ Operational effectiveness is a requirement because of reimbursement and maximizing the profit to our shareholders, but clinical expertise remains our first priority,” Ford concluded.

 
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