By Kristi McClain, Medicom Director, Clinical Solutions

When a patient's outside imaging isn't in the chart when a provider needs it, the cost isn't just time, it's a decision made without the full context. Patients may wait weeks or months for an appointment, and by the time they're finally in the room, the care team doesn't always have the complete picture of what they've already been through before the visit. That's frustrating for the patient and the people caring for them.

I've spent my career close to that problem, first as a nurse in pediatric intensive-care and post-anesthesia care units, in a children's multispecialty clinic, and as a clinical implementation coach helping physicians and staff get comfortable in Epic. I've seen what technology can do when it works well and genuinely supports a care team, and I've seen how much pressure and workload people already carry. Technology, and the workflows built on top of it, should make things less complicated and protect patients and staff from mistakes. Checkpoint does that. It's the designated spot where outside studies land when they need human review.

Inside the Checkpoint Workflow

Checkpoint is a single, auditable reconciliation worklist. It can live directly in the Medicom platform, or you can launch it from your EHR as a SMART on FHIR app. When automation can't safely complete the reconciliation on its own, Checkpoint gives staff a clear path to quickly resolve flagged records:

• Needs Match: The study is held securely, awaiting staff review to connect it to the internal patient record.
• Orderable: The study is matched, automatically or by staff, and is ready to link to an active clinical order.
• Stored: The images are routed to your archive or PACS, and a full audit record is saved.

Where the Safety Checks Live

Reconciling outside imaging is where mistakes tend to creep in, most often when a study is  associated with the wrong patient's chart or lost in an unreconciled queue in a system few can access. Checkpoint puts built-in safety warnings and alerts directly in that path, configurable to match how your team works. When something doesn't line up, staff can catch it before it becomes a problem.

Because those checks flag mismatches and permissions are granular, reconciliation no longer has to sit with a handful of people. You can expand the work across more of your team without worrying that a busy staff member will match a patient’s health data to the wrong patient unnoticed. That means fewer bottlenecks and fewer overnight calls to the one or two people who "own" reconciliation.

It also means better data integrity and studies merged into the patient's chart sooner, so clinicians across the health system can pull them up right in the EHR. That part matters to me more than almost anything. When care is siloed, patients feel it; it leads to preventable errors and delayed decisions and diagnoses. Getting the right images into the right chart quickly is one  way we break those silos down.

Features Built for the Real World 

We designed Checkpoint to tackle the friction intake teams, technologists, and clinicians face  every day.

• Admin Review Safety Check: When an incoming study has a date of birth that differs from your internal records, Checkpoint flags it for verification. A user with approval permissions reviews the match alongside intake staff, intercepting wrong-patient associations before they reach the archive.
• Bulk Association: When multiple studies share the same patient demographics, staff can group and process them together, turning a repetitive click-through into a single decision and cutting review time significantly.
• Order Generation: If your workflow needs an order to keep moving, staff can link the study to an open order or generate a new one on the spot.
• Fast Reference Viewing: Checkpoint uses AWS HealthImaging to stream studies straight to the browser, so staff can view the study and choose to reconcile or reject it into the archive, before it's stored in PACS.  

‍A Better Experience for Every Role

Everyone benefits from a cleaner intake process. Front desk and back office staff, plus technologists, get a clear queue, fast reference viewing, and tools like bulk association to move through repetitive work quickly. Administrators get a complete audit trail and control over approval permissions. Once a study is reconciled, clinicians across the health system can pull it up directly in the EHR, no more hunting for outside imaging buried in a separate system. 

By pulling exceptions into one smart worklist with real safety checks behind it, Checkpoint helps your team get each incoming study exactly where it belongs, safely and without the guesswork.

We’re committed to building solutions that help rather than add to the load. Partnering closely with our customers is a big part of why I love working with Medicom. In a field that can feel overwhelming, there's nothing better than a workflow that surprises someone with how simple it is. 

Talk with us about bringing order to outside imaging intake. One worklist, clear statuses, and built-in safety checks. We deliver everything your team needs to get each incoming study where it belongs.