The Echotech service model combines the security of full governance found in an accredited clinical department with the financial gains of delivering leaner services within the community setting. This model has been continually refined since the company’s establishment in 2001.
Good quality care costs less than sub-optimal care as length of stay, admission rates and readmission rates are reduced
Institute for Innovation and Improvement. Focus on Heart Failure Jan 2009
Echotech depolys single Echo 'units', equipment and staff, across institutional boundaries and therefore allows resources to be shared between commissioning organisations.
Echotech employs an innovative strategy to deliver echocardiography in primary care, thereby providing the local, early and accurate diagnosis of cardiac abnormalities.
Echotech Service Specification Overview
- Community Echocardiography service provided by a BSE Accredited Clinical Department (only 1 of 18 echo providers in the UK to hold this distinction)
- 'End to End’ service - from patient booking and administration to real time (on line) access to reports and study images
- Full adherence to Clinical Governance Framework (including clinical supervision, staff training / development and clinical audit)
- Leading-edge technology allows delivery of Echotech service across full range of community based locations
e.g. Echotech has pioneered the use of Ultralinq, a web based image archiving system to (a) streamline the QA / peer review process and (b) make images easily available to secondary care physicians thus avoiding the need for re-scanning in the acute sector - Free of charge GP educational support (including community echo seminars and GP echo handbook)