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Exam offers benefits for radiology/IT professionals

Radiology Administrator's Compliance and Reimbursement Insider, April 1, 2008

If your radiology department or imaging center is like many others, you’re still looking for a good IT or PACS professional.

The new American Board of Imaging Informatics (ABII) Professional Certification exam will help eliminate the confusion and improve PACS around the country, says ABII member Chuck Socia R.T(R)(CT)(QM)/
-CIIP, director of hospital systems at Empiric Systems in Morrisville, NC.

“This exam is the best thing to happen to PACS in 10–20 years,” says -Bobby Himel, BS, RT(R)(CT)
(MR), CIIP, PACS administrator at Baylor Regional Medical Center at Plano, TX, and a Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine (SIIM) member who passed the pilot exam in June 2007.

Mission: To improve imaging standards

ABII has created and manages the Imaging Informatics Professional (IIP) certification program and awards the Certified Imaging Informatics Professional (CIIP) designation to qualified candidates. The SIIM and the American Registry of Radiologic Technologists founded the ABII in 2007 and created a pilot program the same year, says Caroline Wilson, public relations director for SIIM.

Essentially, imaging informatics merges the technological know-how of the information age with the intricate needs of ABII’s mission to enhance patient care, professionalism, and competence in imaging informatics.

Challenge: To establish a credential program

According to SIIM, the ABII IIP certification program provides a proper credential for IIPs to enhance professional development, stimulate career growth, and offer objective validation of IIP experience.

SIIM defines an IIP as an individual who applies his or her education and clinical and IT expertise to managing enterprisewide PACS and other digital medical imaging systems. The primary role of the IIP is to evaluate, analyze, implement, and render informed opinions about the delivery of healthcare using imaging informatics systems.

Why is the certification necessary? The practice of IIP administration predates any specialty organization, training program, or certification body, says Socia. IIPs enter the profession with a variety of educational backgrounds and practical experiences. Many IIPs have acquired knowledge and expertise from informal guidance or on-the-job training, he says.

Specific education is not a prerequisite to the practice of IIP administration, Socia explains.

Eventually, the certification should lead to the development of an undergraduate curriculum toward a bachelor’s degree.

The issues have affected the industry for the past 10 years, says Socia. There have been no qualifications for PACS professionals. Yet these professionals are critical to any hospital or operation and can make or break the imaging department, he says. There is a great need for a quality person and a real way to quantify qualifications, he adds.

This certification will become the standard within our diverse PACS field, says Himel.

In essence, this test represents the marriage between IT and radiology technologists (RT), he says. There has been much confusion between the RT certification and IT qualifications. One could think of the ABII as the issuer of the marriage license and SIIM as the marriage counselor, he says.

How to register for the examination

Applications are now open for the next IIP exam, scheduled for September.

Interested IIPs should visit www.abii.org for more information and to determine eligibility for the exam. Registration should begin in April.

For each exam, space is limited to the first 100 registrants.

How to prepare for the exam

There are no set curriculum or practice tests for the IIP exam because SIIM remains independent of exam certification since they are an education and training organization, says Wilson.

Success on the ABII IIP certification exam will be the result of experience, education, and acquired knowledge, according to SIIM.

It will cross the spectrum of imaging informatics knowledge as described in the IIP exam Test Content Outline. No educational course can guarantee that its content will represent the questions on the ABII IIP certification examination, Wilson says.

Himel recommends reading extensively about PACS to prepare for the exam. (See Himel’s reading list in the sidebar at the left.)

How to find an ABII-qualified employee

Today, there are only about 200 qualified CIIP professionals, says Socia, so they may be difficult to find. But the numbers will continue to grow.

If you are looking for a PACS professional in your department or practice, you can simply insert language in your classified advertisement stating that you expect the employee to be IIP certified within a set period of time, such as one year, says Himel.

Insider sources

Bobby Himel, BS, RT(R)(CT)(MR), CIIP, PACS administrator at Baylor Regional Medical Center at Plano, TX, 4700 Alliance Boulevard, Plano, TX 75093, 469/814-2000.

Chuck Socia R.T.(R)(CT)(QM)/CIIP, director of hospital systems at Empiric Systems, LLC, 3800 Paramount Parkway, Suite 130, Morrisville, NC 27560, 866/367-4742; www.Empiricsystems.com.

Caroline Wilson, public relations director at The Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine, 19440 Golf Vista Plaza, Suite 330 Leesburg, VA 20176-8264, 703/723-0432, Ext. 315; cwilson@siimweb.org.

Exam covers 10 competencies

The following is the basic test content outline (TCO), released by The Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine (SIIM). SIIM has announced the completion of the overall educational learning objectives or each of the 10 domains of the American Board of Imaging Informatics TCO.

Learning objectives

1. Procurement

Determine organization readiness for the electronic environment

Establish and implement a process for vendor selection

Negotiate contracts with vendors

2. Project management

Identify the goals, scope, risks, and key members of the project team

Evaluate the feasibility of a project

Utilize the common project management tools

3. Operations

Design and implement quality improvement procedures

Develop and implement policies and procedures

Ensure compliance with federal regulations

4. Communications

Recognize roles and relationships in healthcare settings

Communicate with healthcare professionals using appropriate medical terminology

Alert clinical staff members about issues regarding system availability or changes

Provide decision-makers with information about system changes

Develop user feedback mechanisms

5. Training and education

Perform a needs assessment to determine training needs

Evaluate and select training programs according to user needs

Implement training or educational programs

Evaluate effectiveness of training

6. Image management

Manage the design of the environment for viewing and interpreting images

Evaluate the human-computer interface

Determine optimal image flow and implement processes that ensure data integrity

Import and export outside studies into a PACS

7. Information technology

Assess storage and archive needs and determine the appropriate architecture

Design and specify network architecture

Implement and maintain appropriate server hardware and software

Retrieve information from databases for operations, quality assurance, and planning purposes

Identify and implement IT standards

Develop appropriate replacement schedules

Identify key components of PACS architecture and explain connections

8. Systems management

Determine the requirements for optimal, cost-effective system capacity and throughput

Plan disaster recovery and business continuity strategies

Use problem management and system availability tools and strategies

Plan and evaluate data migration procedures

Maintain data security and individual privacy

9. Clinical engineering

Assess imaging modality capabilities

Supervise modality integration

Establish a program for image display quality control (such as explaining what is meant by compliance with the Grayscale Standard Display Function)

Recognize hazards specific to the healthcare environment

10. Medical informatics

Identify and implement medical imaging standards

Apply appropriate Integrated Healthcare Enterprise guidelines

Integrate image architecture into the organization’s long-range plan

How to prepare for the SIIM exam

The Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine (SIIM) Education Advisory Network is currently developing a core curriculum to further define the Imaging Informatics Professional (IIP) profession and devise a model curriculum and guide for education in the field. (See www.siimweb.org/index.cfm?id=4058.)

To help you prepare, Bobby Himel, BS, RT(R)(CT)
(MR), CIIP, PACS administrator at Baylor Regional Medical Center at Plano, TX, who recently passed the exam, offers the following SIIM resources:

SIIM IIP Symposium (www.siim2008.org/2008IIP.html)

Syllabus that accompanies the symposium (www.siimweb.org/index.cfm?id=231)

SIIM primer series (www.siimweb.org/index.cfm?id=267)

PACS: A Guide to the Digital Revolution

PACS and Imaging Informatics: Basic Principles and Applications

Digital Imaging: A Primer for Radiographers, Radiologists and Health Care Professionals

Handbook of Medical Imaging, Volume 3: Display and PACS

OTech trilogy (three books include subject matter about DICOM, PACS administration, and HL-7)

Check out www.otechimg.com for more options