01 · How an isolated practice shops
A shortlist built at trade shows
Santa Barbara is a good place to run an imaging practice and a poor place to hear what software is worth buying. Chuck Scudelari says the word of mouth other practices rely on does not really reach him, so he builds his shortlist somewhere else: on the floor at AHRA, RBMA and RSNA, and in the trade journals in between. That is how a name becomes a candidate.
AbbaDox had already been on one of those lists, five or six years earlier, and had not won: there was no RIS to sell him then. The relationship survived the loss. When the practice needed to move again, it was one of three or four vendors he called back, and the one he personally settled on after the demo.
- AHRA, RBMA and RSNA, plus the journals, instead of local word of mouth
- A named shortlist of three or four vendors, narrowed to one
- AbbaDox had been considered years before, prior to having a RIS
- The decision was made on the demo, by the people who would run it
02 · What the next platform had to be
Established, all in one, affordable
The practice had spent about eighteen months on the RIS it was leaving, a product that in Chuck’s words seemed very much to be in a beta stage and had not been sold that way. Faxes and information did not move reliably inside it. Before that, patient engagement had been the gap in whatever they were running: no dependable way to reach out, remind, or let a referring office in.
So the brief was short and it was not about features. It had to be established on the RIS side rather than promising. It had to be affordable for a single freestanding practice rather than priced for a hospital network. And it had to be one system: patient outreach and physician access under the same umbrella as the RIS, so it could be rolled out once, to staff and to patients.
- Established on the RIS side, not a product still becoming one
- Affordable for a freestanding, physician-owned practice
- Patient outreach and referring-physician access in the same system
- One rollout, to staff and to patients, instead of several
Why it matters
“It’s just like walking into a fancy hotel. You give them your credit card, you sign on the line, and basically they’re asking you, please go to your room.”
Chuck Scudelari, Chief Operating Officer
Pueblo Radiology Medical Group
03 · A four-month runway
Moving while the old system was still running
Pueblo did not get a comfortable timeline, because it was leaving a vendor rather than upgrading one. Chuck puts the window at 90 to 120 days from decision to live on CareFlow RIS, short, by his own account, for a practice this size.
What he credits is the way the work was run inside that window: meetings arranged, the information actually gathered, people on site as well as on Zoom, and a team his own staff could reach easily and often. His summary is that AbbaDox stepped up to its obligation and moved it forward quickly, which is a narrower claim than a flawless launch and a more useful one.
- 90 to 120 days from decision to live
- On site as well as on Zoom, through the whole window
- Frequent, easy contact between the two teams
- The exit from the previous vendor set the clock, not the project plan
04 · What they were buying it for
A front desk the patient never queues at
Ask Chuck what good looks like and he does not describe software. He describes arriving somewhere well run: you hand over a card, you sign, and someone tells you to go straight through. No queue at the desk, no clipboard, no paperwork that could have been done at home on the patient’s own time.
That is the standard the practice set for the platform, on both sides of the referral. Patients register and fill in their forms before they arrive, and book the appointment types the practice lets them book. Reminders and notices go out without anyone chasing them. And referring offices schedule directly, which is the part that matters most for a practice that has spent 60 years being the one the local physicians trust.
- Patients registering and completing paperwork before they arrive
- Self-scheduling, for the appointment types the practice allows
- Reminders and notices that go out on their own
- Referring offices scheduling directly into the system
- Respecting the patient’s time as the actual measure
Client story