Remote teleradiology has been on the rise in the U.S. and offers clear benefits. However, the use of teleradiology also risks adverse consequences due to the diminished capacity for medical communication, according to senior author Dr. John Ulmer of the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW).
MCW provides onsite teleradiology services to its emergency department (ED), and, as would typically be the case with an offsite teleradiology model, ED physicians are required to electronically enter all pertinent clinical information for imaging studies. Because MCW's PACS is integrated with the EMR, however, radiologists are also able to search for pertinent clinical information before and during all imaging interpretations.
To assess the clinical impact of providing interpreting radiologists with access to the EMR, the researchers performed a prospective analysis of 2,000 head CT studies acquired over a three-month period. They compared the information entered by the referring ED physician with the additional information retrieved by the interpreting radiologist from the EMR.
The team found that EMR access may prevent significant interpretation errors in nearly 10% of ED head CTs. Discover what else they found by visiting the poster at the Lakeside Learning Center.
