A Diagnostics & Imaging Week

Digirad (Poway, California), a provider of medical diagnostic imaging systems and services, said it has signed a "letter of understanding" with Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (Baltimore, Maryland).

Johns Hopkins will be available to read diagnostic images for primary care physicians, throughout the greater Baltimore area and surrounding counties, using Digirad in-office cardiac imaging. Digirad's mobile imaging service will provide equipment and personnel who will perform the imaging procedures in the physicians' offices. Through agreements between the physicians and Johns Hopkins, Johns Hopkins cardiologists will interpret patients' images and the results will be returned electronically to the referring physicians.

Digirad CEO Mark Casner said the company's business strategy supports better patient care, because it combines the family physician's patient-specific knowledge with the diagnostic expertise of specialists at leading medical institutions such as Johns Hopkins.

Casner said the company expects "substantial benefits for patients, including excellent quality imaging, readings by highly skilled cardiac specialists and the comfort of knowing that their own doctors will remain closely involved in their care."

"With this service, physicians can be more effective at patient scheduling, provide important diagnostic services, and offer the specialized expertise of a leading medical institution while maintaining the primary patient relationship," he said.

In other contract news:

• Cepheid (Sunnyvale, California) reported it has signed a contract with Novation (Irving, Texas), a contracting services company serving VHA, University HealthSystem Consortium (UHC) and Provista. Through its affiliations, Novation represents 49% of admissions, 52% of total surgeries and 44% of staffed beds in the U.S. Under the terms of the contract, VHA, UHC and Provista members can take advantage of Cepheid's GeneXpert System and Xpert MRSA tests at pre-negotiated prices.

MRSA is recognized as a growing public health concern, cited as a leading cause of Healthcare-Acquired Infections (HAIs). Infection rates have increased every year since 1970. Xpert MRSA test results are currently available in almost 70 minutes, thereby enabling rapid identification of carriers of the pathogen in less than two hours from the time of patient sampling to the delivery of test results to the floor.

The availability of the Xpert MRSA test and the GeneXpert System is expected to enable Novation hospitals to implement more efficient infection control measures, leading to lower HAI rates and improved patient care.

On-demand Xpert MRSA results enable healthcare professionals to rapidly identify MRSA colonized patients entering the hospital population, thereby reducing risk of potential transmission. As recent studies published in both the Journal of the American Medical Association and the Annals of Internal Medicine demonstrate, true rapid test turnaround time is critical to reaching optimal results with a fully implemented infection control plan to reduce HAI rates and improve patient care.