In her role as the quality officer for the radiology department at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Dr. Bettina Siewert receives feedback and complaints from referring physicians.
"Over the years I have heard occasional complaints about our report recommendations not being specific enough to be actionable or being too vague in wording, leaving it up to the referring physician to choose what to do next," she told AuntMinnie.com. "We were wondering how frequently our recommendation specifically states the next step, how often there is an opportunity for improvement, and what type of improvements we would need to implement."
To investigate these questions, the researchers searched their institution's PACS database over a 10-month period for abdominal CT reports that contained recommendations from the interpreting radiologist. After evaluating the reports, the group found that 28% of the recommendations could be improved by providing actionable information about the exact time interval for follow-up imaging and specifying one imaging modality, said presenter Siewert.
What else did they find? Attend this talk on Tuesday morning to learn more.
