Customer Stories: HeartNexus

24 hrs

Average echo & EKG turnaround

~50%

increase in study volume— with no added staff

30–40%

reduction in turnaround time

1 week

to onboard a new partner site

Meet Dr. Robert Beto and Paul Gabriel Jr.

More than half of U.S. counties have no direct access to a cardiologist. Dr. Robert Beto built HeartNexus to fill that alarming gap. After three decades in cardiology, including years at a teaching hospital, he had watched patients in rural and underserved areas wait too long for cardiac care or go without it entirely. HeartNexus's answer was a distributed telecardiology model: rather than opening physical locations, the company deploys board-certified cardiologists remotely, credentialed by state, to read studies for partner facilities wherever those facilities happen to be.

Paul Gabriel, Jr., the company's operations officer, manages the infrastructure that makes the business run. In an organization spread across 46 states with 70+ cardiologists, having a centralized system that works across every location is essential: it determines whether reports are consistent, whether turnaround times hold, and whether every partner facility receives the same quality of interpretation regardless of which physician reads their study. Both Paul and Dr. Beto will tell you that none of it holds together without a PACS every cardiologist in the network can open and trust.

The Challenge

Every technology decision at HeartNexus has downstream consequences. Because of this, they needed a PACS that worked the same way every time, across every location, for physicians coming from academic medical centers, hospital systems, and private practices. The system also had to be intuitive enough that onboarding a new cardiologist didn’t require a long implementation or training process. For Dr. Beto and Paul, every hour spent troubleshooting software is an hour not spent expanding their cardiology network.

The Solution

Ease of Use For Every Physician

HeartNexus cardiologists come from different backgrounds and different technology environments. Studycast's learning curve is short enough that onboarding a new physician doesn't slow down the network's ability to take on new partner sites and provide excellent care in underserved areas. As Paul puts it, “Cardiologists have better uses for their time than learning a new login.”

Standardization Across the Network

Studycast enforces consistency across 70 cardiologists in 46 states so HeartNexus doesn't have to manage it manually. Every cardiologist opens the same interface, reads the same way, and produces the same quality of report regardless of where they're reading from.

In turn, every partner facility gets that report back within 24 hours, whether they're a three-bed rural clinic in West Virginia or a large Manhattan hospital system.

Scalability Without Growing Pains

HeartNexus has grown study volume by roughly 50%, expanded its cardiologist network, and incorporated new partner types including the Department of Corrections, all without rebuilding their infrastructure.

Because the onboarding process is uniform for every new cardiologist and every physician operates within the same workflow, adding capacity doesn't create new operational problems to solve.

How Studycast Powers the Whole Operation

HeartNexus has run on Studycast since day one. Each cardiologist is credentialed by state and assigned to specific partner facilities, and logs in each day to find their queue ready to go. Studies arrive from primary care offices, device manufacturers, correctional facilities, and hospitals across the country. The cardiologist reads and the report is back to the partner facility within 24 hours.

What makes this operationally viable is that Studycast brings a level of consistency and clinical accuracy that a distributed team struggles to maintain otherwise. Physicians know exactly what they're looking at when they open a study and all reports are generated the same way regardless of who reads them or where they are. As Paul describes it, “Centralization does the standardization work for you.”

Onboarding reflects the same simplicity. Studycast's intuitive interface gets a new cardiologist operational within a week. There's nothing to install and no lengthy implementation. And growing the network is as straightforward as adding the next physician to HeartNexus’ workflows.

What our customers say

Photo of Dr. Robert Beto — “Studycast has become a force of standardization for us. The level of care remains the same, whether our partner facilities have 4 beds or 500 beds.”

Dr. Robert Beto
Cardiologist, CEO, and founder, HeartNexus

Photo of Paul Gabriel, Jr. — "Studycast centralizes the studies while giving our team the technical abilities to interpret from wherever they feel comfortable."

Paul Gabriel, Jr.
Operations officer, HeartNexus

Reaching Patients Who Have No Other Option

HeartNexus serves cardiology deserts: rural primary care offices, small critical access hospitals, and communities hundreds of miles from the nearest cardiologist. One of their more unusual partnerships is with the Department of Corrections.

Incarcerated individuals often have complex cardiac histories, including damage from years of substance use. Getting an inmate to a hospital for a cardiac consult requires 2–-3 guards, transport, and significant security coordination. HeartNexus handles those consults through telehealth, with nurse practitioners on-site and cardiologists reading remotely through Studycast. The DOC gets better cardiac care for their population at a lower cost. The patient gets a board-certified cardiologist without leaving the facility.

In less than two years, HeartNexus has completed 300–400 telehealth cardiac appointments with incarcerated patients through this program. Dr. Beto, who has spoken with many of these patients personally, says most of them are just grateful to be seen.

Top 3 Drivers of Success

Centralized Worklist

Every cardiologist in the HeartNexus network logs into the same worklist daily and knows exactly which studies are waiting for them. No one needs to wrangle physicians to complete their queue. As Paul puts it, "our cardiologists who utilize Studycast check it daily and are responsible for certain projects, so in most cases it is almost an instant assignment."

Image Quality and Measurement Tools

For a telecardiology network built on clinical accuracy, there’s essentially zero room for error. Dr. Beto points to the precision of what cardiologists are seeing as what keeps reads consistent and reliable: "You pull up a study, you know it's going to be the same workflow and the same reproducibility, every time."

A Trusted Partnership

Every partner facility that joins the HeartNexus network is onboarded onto Studycast. On the other side, Studycast has flagged facilities in need of a telecardiology partner, helping to grow the HeartNexus network. Both sides are invested in the other succeeding. As Paul puts it, "Not only do we trust the software, but the individuals who are in control of the software trust us."

Built to Keep Growing

HeartNexus has built a telecardiology network capable of delivering board-certified cardiac care to clinics of all sizes, something that didn't exist five years ago. They've grown study volume, continuously expanded their network of cardiologists, and taken on new partner types without any operational overhaul.

The standardization Studycast enforces across the network has primed HeartNexus for growth without operational strain. Conversations about expanding into cardiac CT are already underway, with deeper growth in the Department of Corrections and markets that don't yet know they need a telecardiology partner close behind. The goal is simple: touch as many lives as possible. Studycast is a major factor in getting them there.

HeartNexus Deploys 70 Cardiologists Across 46 States on a Single PACS