Life Scan Wellness, the largest company for Public Safety Physicals in the US, uses Tricefy for medical imaging and data management to take care of America’s First Responders. Life Scan Wellness travels to Fire Departments all over the country to give First Responders an extensive examination, scanning everything from the neck and down. They work proactively to detect abnormalities before it’s too late. Annually, Life Scan Wellness teams travel to more than 26 states to visit 50,000 patients who work as First Responders.
What do you look for when scanning a patient?
Life Scan Wellness sees firefighters and police officers who have far greater exposure to dangerous elements than the general population. Besides blood work, vision tests, hearing exams, and the general physical exam, the ultrasound technician performs a comprehensive, full-body scan to detect nodules, masses and other irregularities in early stages, which are commonly overlooked. The scans include views of the thyroid, heart, and reproductive organs. The scans are a crucial part of early cancer screening.
“We catch cancer in really early stages. There are cases each year where we save lives due to early screening. Most people get a scan when something is wrong, not before something feels wrong.” – says Rebecca Knecht, Clinical Director of Life Scan Wellness
There are other companies doing mobile physical exams, but Life Scan Wellness is unique by performing ultrasound exams in addition to the normal tests and checkups. The ultrasound scans combined with the traditional tests yield a more accurate screening.
Why is the ultrasound scan so important in your First Responder check-up?
“63% of firefighters develop some sort of cancer or heart disease. Lack of sleep, stress, and dehydration are some of the main things that cause a lot of cardiac issues. One of the main conditions we detect in early heart disease is arrhythmias. Now we can take echocardiography and a stress test together to understand the bigger picture.”
“If I see a patient with high blood pressure and an elevated heart rate, potentially I wouldn’t be overly concerned. But, since that patient is a firefighter, it would be a big concern, given his environment. If the patient needs immediate treatment they need digital images for their healthcare provider.”
Life Scan Wellness follows the NFPA 1582 guidelines, which indicate if a firefighter should be pulled from duty, or if they can do their treatment while on duty.
Life Scan Wellness saves many lives by being their first ever ultrasound.
Most of their firefighters are having ultrasound scans for the first time. This could mean that abnormalities have been missed or metastasized, potentially leading to chemotherapy.
“We had a patient in Texas who had a mass showing on his ultrasound in his abdomen. We couldn’t tell what it was, but we knew it shouldn’t be there. He was completely asymptomatic. His blood work was showing normal results, no symptoms at all. Turns out he had prostate cancer that was spreading. This was his first-ever ultrasound scan. He had to go through treatment. The doctor told him that if they hadn’t caught it in time he would likely have died in a couple of months. Today he’s completely cancer-free.”
Why do patients need easy access to their medical images?
“If a firefighter is treated for lung cancer during retirement, Tricefy helps prove that the cancer developed during firefighting duty, allowing the firefighter to obtain the medical coverage they deserve. Now, I no longer have to spend time searching storage for a 20-year old paperchart.”
A firefighter today often needs to prove when a condition was discovered while on duty in order to get medical coverage. With Tricefy, Life Scan Wellness has all records securely stored in the Tricefy cloud, with easy access.
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Patients don’t have time to redo any scans.
“In some cases, our patients have to go to their doctor immediately and many times they are not allowed to work until this issue has been cleared up. The printed images aren’t great, so without Tricefy they would have to redo all of the scans. Now they can easily send digital images to their healthcare provider, and the images are great quality. Also, we needed to protect our patient information and make it available to them, as easily as possible. That’s why I really wanted to move towards paperless and ease-of-use.”
Why was important for Life Scan Wellness to go digital?
“Getting rid of the printers and paper so patients can access their medical images easier was the first goal I had when I started as Clinical Director here in February. Having 50,000 annual patients, I knew we could save so much time and money by not printing.”
Why does Life Scan Wellness use Tricefy?
“We love Tricefy because it’s user-friendly and it’s super easy to use for our ultrasound technicians. They train for two years to use the ultrasound machine, but many times they struggle with computer systems, but not anymore. With Tricefy, it’s easy to attach the images to the patient’s EMR file. The portal is super easy to use as well. Now, if we have any medical requests, I simply search for the patient and pull the images, versus having to find the specific machine on which the scan was performed. Prior to Trice, it would routinely take weeks to track down older images. Additionally, Trice customer service has been awesome. They respond immediately and always provide helpful resources.”
About Life Scan Wellness
As the Clinical Director of Life Scan Wellness, Rebecca Knecht oversees the field teams, and is responsible for their usage of Tricefy, including technical support and training of Tricefy and their EMR system to the teams. Life Scan Wellness, founded in 1998, is the largest company for occupational physicals for Public Safety nationally. Life Scan Wellness does occupational physical exams at fire departments in over 26 states, and has close to 50,000 patients yearly. They are based in Tampa but with over 20 full-time teams that work all over the country their services are now expanding out to California, Missouri and Washington. Life Scan Wellness uses Tricefy for Secure Archiving and Patient Sharing. They have 22 Terason U Smart 3000 machines connected to Tricefy.
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