With 120 to 150 CT scans performed daily and staff radiologists onsite 24 hours a day, Vancouver General Hospital is a very busy center, and so quality assurance (QA) is an important task, according to presenter Dr. Tim O'Connell.
"We're quite concerned about radiation doses given our scan volumes, so we wanted to do something that would allow us to immediately know if there was a scan QA/dose problem," he said.
A 70-inch display was set up in the radiology department reading room, running software written by O'Connell to extract radiation dose information in real-time for all of the hospital's patients.
"Within a minute or two of the patient coming off the scanner, their scan protocol information and radiation dose are up on our 'big board,' " he told AuntMinnie.com.
Radiologists can also use a Web-based protocol decoder -- also written by O'Connell -- from their workstations to examine any problematic CT protocols from the scanners and make any necessary changes. This closes the loop from the continuous quality improvement perspective, O'Connell said.
"We've found that having the doses up on the wall, color-coded for dose level, [makes] a huge difference for us; you can't ignore a dose that's too high that's colored red and glaring at you from the screen on the wall," he said. "We've used this same technique to build real-time worklist displays that show us our ordered/scheduled studies and study dictation status. We've got a lot of screens on our walls, all updating information in real-time, but it allows us to manage our workload and catch problems before they become serious."
