Patent ID: 8131562

Claim:
A method for monitoring image studies and workflow within an integrated healthcare enterprise having a plurality of individual components, the method comprising: maintaining a workflow package file associated with each image study on each individual component of the integrated healthcare network that the image study resides, each said workflow package file storing data comprising: the image study ordered for a patient, physician names associated with the image study, workflow routing rules for the image study, a current individual component location of the image study, a date and time of arrival of the image study to and departure of the image study from each individual component location, a date and time of image study retrieval by a physician if retrieved, and a date and time when the image study was returned by a physician if completed; generating a query to at least one individual component of the integrated healthcare network from an administrator workstation/server over at least one network for selected data stored in one or more workflow package files; generating a return value at the at least one individual component within the healthcare enterprise based upon data stored in the one or more workflow package files; comparing the return values to a user specified threshold value; and generating at the administrator workstation/server a graphical representation of an individual component performance of at least one component of the plurality of individual components within the integrated healthcare enterprise based upon the comparison of the return values to the user specified threshold value.