As our February User of the Month, we recognize Marissa Vaccarelli, a dedicated medical physicist at the Cancer Institute’s Department of Radiation Medicine at Northwell Health. As the largest healthcare system in New York State, treating approximately 250 patients per day across eight different physical locations, the team at Northwell is incredibly busy and has embraced automation as a way to provide not only efficiency but also standardization and quality.
In this dynamic environment, Marissa has been instrumental in implementing various Radformation solutions. She explains the importance of incorporating automation in their workflow, "As a multi-institutional center with cross coverage of physics and dosimetry staff, our goal was to increase efficiency of our clinical processes. Considering a clinic of this scale, standardization allows our team to safely and effectively provide top-quality patient care."
Northwell has been utilizing EZFluence since 2019 and expanded to ClearCheck recently. Reflecting on ClearCheck's significant impact, Marissa describes, "We were thrilled to embrace the many aspects that [ClearCheck’s] plan check module offers, which not only enables our planners to catch any technical issues but also provides a head start to our second check team, rendering time savings in our bustling, clinical setting." Through extensive testing and support, Marissa and her team were able to implement ClearCheck to specifically fit thier individualized clinical needs for an optimized practice in their unique environment.
Highlighting her favorite features, Marissa points out, "The 'PDF to ARIA' option in ClearCheck reporting is a wonderful efficiency! Long gone are the days of standard plan uploading and processing." Additionally, the whole team finds the comments feature in ClearCheck invaluable for clinic communication and smooth handoffs.
With the most recent additions of AutoContour, ClearCalc, RadMonteCarlo, and ChartCheck into their daily operations, Northwell aims to standardize processes in their clinic. Marissa details the simplicity of adding additional Radformation solutions, “Once our team became familiar with the ClearCheck interface, AutoContour’s similar design was instrumental for our team’s quick utilization.” Further elaborating on AutoContour, she highlights, "The automated contours give our planning team an excellent jumpstart in our treatment planning workflow, and we are looking forward to learning the more advanced features of AutoContour."
Lastly, Marissa warmly emphasizes ChartCheck's role as her "best friend" during weekly physics checks, mentioning, "ChartCheck automates all the checks that I would normally look to complete manually, except now, all the checks are located in a centralized, coherent space." The time spent manually checking charts was adding up, and after adopting ChartCheck, Marissa is saving invaluable time and therefore freeing up time for her efforts to be focused in other areas.
Marissa's experience at Northwell Health exemplifies the transformative impact of Radformation's automation solutions in a large and dynamic healthcare environment. Her insights serve as inspiration for other physicists considering the adoption of automation tools into their workflows. Acknowledging those who have made this possible, Marissa says, “Thank you to our Northwell Health colleagues in the Department of Radiation Medicine, as well as the entire physics and dosimetry staff for their collaborative efforts into integrating our newest Radformation additions of ClearCheck and AutoContour.”
She kindly shares “an additional thanks to the Radformation Clinical Success Manager as well as product support team for their dedicated and personalized approach.”
Outside of her professional commitments, Marissa enjoys spending time with family and friends, exploring the outdoors, and teaching graduate students.