Children’s Medical Center (CMC) had already selected PowerPath when Linda Blazek joined its staff as a histotechnologist. “CMC moved from a mostly paper system to an electronic one. We switched from our earlier system when we found out support would no longer be offered for the product. I was pleased to move forward with PowerPath, since it’s recognized as a best-of-breed system and easily integrates with other systems we use,” says Blazek.

Automated Reporting
“One of the best things about PowerPath is that it has made quality assurance, formerly a tedious task, so easy,” says Blazek. Cases requiring correlation now automatically go to a file for a pathologist to review. Before PowerPath, pages and pages of paper—from outside consults, peer review, and frozen sections—all had to be reviewed manually. “But now, when physicians correlate, there’s no need to type; a single click selects the required information. With everything on the screen before you, tasks that once took hours to complete now are finished in only a minute or two.” 

Once pathology reports are completed by a pathologist, PowerPath automatically faxes copies of the report to consulting physicians or prints copies to the desktop printers of in-hospital surgeons following physician-defined preferences. Making turnaround time quicker for surgeons further enables prompt treatment for patients. Blazek also finds PowerPath invaluable for conducting patient searches.  For example, when residents look for patient studies on a particular type of tumor, the database can easily be searched for the exact tumor type.

Superior Support
“Support for PowerPath has been consistently great,” according to Blazek. For CMC’s initial implementation in 2001, four staff members went to PowerPath headquarters for training. Blazek adds, “The staff was very supportive and had great ideas for helping us determine what we wanted and needed to improve our use of the system.” Later, the same staff was available when Blazek called or emailed with questions. CMC’s last upgrade to its pathology system also went smoothly.

Future Plans
Blazek has no qualms staying positive about PowerPath: “It never dies,” she exclaims. “Since we went live three years ago, downtime has been measured in minutes.” For CMC’s next step, Blazek wants to integrate an immunostainer with PowerPath to print bar-coded labels, assuring the correct match between patients and pathology specimens.

The Children's Medical Center of Dayton



Seated: Linda Blazek HT (ASCP), Standing: Deb Hanner HT (ASCP) 
Back row: Raymond Wong MD, Associate Medical Director, L. David Mirkin MD, Director, Anna Childers - Office Coordinator, Matthew Chase - Pathology Supervisor