Online safety screening for MRI exams reduces prep time, cancellations

How can a radiology department improve its MRI exam workflow? Through the use of an online screening questionnaire before patients report for their scan, researchers have found.

"Online MRI safety screening demonstrates potential as an effective tool in reducing MRI workflow delays and post-arrival cancellations," wrote a team led by Sheena Chu, PhD, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The group's findings were published December 17 in the Journal of the American College of Radiology.

MRI safety screening is essential to patient preparation prior to the exam and is performed after the patient has arrived for their appointment. If the patient reports metallic implants or other foreign bodies, they must undergo further workup to determine if the scan can be performed, a process that can result in "significant delays/exam cancellation with subsequent delays in care and loss of revenue," the group noted. Because of this, radiology departments try to perform safety screening before patients' imaging appointments -- sometimes via phone but also online.

Chu and colleagues investigated the effect of online MRI safety screening on department workflow and post-arrival cancellations via a questionnaire available through a patient web portal (MyChart, Epic Systems). Patients still underwent the same safety assessment for MR imaging on the day of their appointment, whether or not they completed the online questionnaire.

The group assessed the impact of the online safety screening by measuring the time interval between the technologist retrieving the patient from the waiting area and acquisition of the first set of MR images ("time-to-image"). It also tracked postarrival cancellations, defining these as the number of instances that a patient checked in but did not actually undergo MR imaging.

The study included 7,062 MRI exams taken over a 12-month period. The investigators compared outcomes between two groups: those who completed online screening (38.5%) and those who did not (61.5%).

Overall, the group reported the following:

Evaluation of the magnitude of online MRI safety screening's ability to increase efficiency, reduce cost, and improve patient satisfaction requires further research, the team wrote, but it noted that the study findings "support the positive impact of online safety screening on MRI workflow through decreased preparation times and reduced postarrival cancellations," and that "while the magnitude of this impact may seem modest on the surface, the average 4.6% reduction [from 37 minutes to 35.3 minutes] in patient preparation time is considered a meaningful gain in efficiency in most contexts."

The full study can be found here.

Disclosure: The University of Wisconsin-Madison receives research support from GE HealthCare and Bracco Diagnostics.