While rotating through his various rotations as a first- and second-year radiology resident at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, presenter Dr. Nicholas Voutsinas noticed that many incoming phone calls were contacting the wrong radiology desk.
"This delayed the referring providers in getting the information they need and [was] disruptive to me as a radiologist, as it would take me away from other tasks that require concentration -- reading the studies," Voutsinas told AuntMinnie.com. "The callers always sound frustrated when I would tell them to call a different desk, so I wanted to come up with a tool that would make it easier for the callers to identify the radiology desk they needed and reduce interruption in the daily workflow of the radiology department."
As most of the phone calls came from the ED, Voutsinas believed that the best place to start was with that department. Working with emergency medicine providers, he created a tool that enables the ED to know which desk was reading each type of study at different points throughout the day. It can be updated instantaneously as changes need to be made, he said.
After conducting a survey, the researchers found that the vast majority of emergency medicine providers accepted the tool. In addition, both the radiologists and the emergency medicine physicians perceived that there were fewer calls looking for the wrong radiology desk, according to Voutsinas.
"We hope that this will allow for our tool to be eventually expanded to the rest of the hospital," Voutsinas said.
Discover more about this application by checking out this presentation at RSNA 2019.
