Structured reporting templates reduce turnaround times by as much as 35 minutes

Structured reporting in neuroradiology can reduce workloads and turnaround times, an analysis of more than 3,000 reports recently proved.

A new paper published in Academic Radiology details one institution’s transition from free text to structured reporting templates and the resultant departmental impact, particularly for residents. Overall, structured reporting decreased the amount of time preliminary reports were available to clinicians by 20.7 minutes—a benefit that likely stems from a reduction in edits and proof-reading that can be a hindrance with free-text reports.

“Structured reporting aims to standardize both the organization of reports (e.g. into organ-based subheadings or feature-checklists), as well as the terminology when describing normal or pathologic findings, ideally by using a universally accepted lexicon,” corresponding author Jan Vosshenrich, MD, from the Department of Radiology, University Hospital Basel in Switzerland, and co-authors shared.

Authors of the study shared that a number of national and international radiology societies have advocated for more structured reporting, citing benefits like lower degrees of reporting variability, diagnostic errors and overlooked findings that are can be problematic with free-text reports. Studies have detailed these benefits before, however, the authors indicate that due to their small sizes and the specificity of the structured templates used, their universal applicability is relatively limited. This is something that the experts involved in this study sought to overcome by using multiple structured reporting templates on a large sample of radiology reports.