In an effort to speed up report turnaround times, the radiology department at University Hospital Basel embarked on an initiative about two years ago to improve workflow, said presenter Dr. Achim Escher.
Escher initially developed a simple, Web-based monitoring system that shows all pending reports, their status, and the time remaining to a predefined limit of 24 hours. Time-critical reports are also highlighted by different colors on the system, which is displayed on large screens in the reading rooms.
"This really helped us to get control of our daily reporting workload," Escher told AuntMinnie.com.
Median report turnaround time decreased from seven hours and 50 minutes in 2012 to three hours and 19 minutes at the end of 2013.
"Today we can guarantee that 95% of all reports are finalized within 24 hours," he said.
Based on this success, the department elected to expand its monitoring efforts to include relevant process steps such as protocoling, scheduling, and patient waiting times. Because radiologists face lots of interruptions, changes of plans, urgent tasks, and a lack of time in their daily schedules, the group wanted to implement tools to help staff members keep control over their worklists, Escher said.
"Computers are much better in following predefined rules of service-level agreements," Escher said. "So our goal is to guarantee that, for example, order entries from the emergency department will be processed within a predefined time limit. And further, we use the same technology to let the emergency department know the status (scheduled time of examination, examination running, images available, report available) of the ordered studies."
The two-year workflow improvement process has yielded a host of benefits, including a decrease in report turnaround times and in the number of outliers, the ability to guarantee a predefined service level to referring physicians, and a reduction in the time to complete exams for the emergency department, Escher said.
