PACS policies and procedures

Documentation of policies and procedures are critical for the proper operation and management of a picture archival and communication system (PACS). Policies, procedures, and site specific documentation may be organized in several categories. Through the use of broad categories one can easily begin to break down the specific areas which require attention and prioritize them as necessary. One way to categorize them is: administration, maintenance, support, architecture and integration, and disaster recovery/business continuity. One area that requires a great deal of focus and discipline is a policy for "change management." It is essential to have a policy in place for making changes to the information system. This would include not only changes to the system such as software upgrades, but changes to workflows such as how images are being distributed, compression settings, network settings, monitor settings, locations of workstations, integration, and disaster recovery/ business continuity. Modifying existing information technology (IT) policies and using published resources can largely simplify the development of organization specific policies and procedures.