After introducing internally developed structured reporting templates for CT exams in July 2019, researchers from University Hospital Basel in Switzerland sought to evaluate the impact on the review process and turnaround times for 3,538 resident reports in their neuroradiology section over a 15-month period.
Presenter Dr. Jan Vosshenrich and colleagues found that the similarity of resident draft reports and staff-reviewed final reports increased from a mean of 0.53 to 0.79 on the Jaccard scale after adoption of structured reporting (with 1.0 indicating perfect similarity), a statistically significant improvement (p < 0.001). Furthermore, mean overall edits on draft reports by residents following readout sessions decreased, as did mean overall edits by staff radiologists during report sign-off sessions.
The mean turnaround time until the preliminary report was ready also declined by 20.7 minutes, dropping from 246.9 minutes before structured reporting to 226.2 minutes (p < 0.001) after implementation. Final reports were also available in an average of 558 minutes, 35 minutes faster than the average of 523 minutes before structured reporting. That difference was also statistically significant (p = 0.02).
"With structured reporting, resident draft reports require fewer edits during the report review process," the authors wrote. "This reduction in proofreading workload is likely responsible for substantially lower report turnaround times."
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