Leaving Chicago
As this year’s annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) winds to a close in Chicago, attendees will return home and hopefully make use of what they learned to improve care at their practices.
We’ll get back to RSNA when we wrap a bow on our conference coverage next week, but the themes of this year’s show—partnerships outside of radiology, focusing on patient-centered care and finding new ways of adding value—were also evident in recent top stories originating outside of the Windy City.
Collaboration with referring physicians is an essential component of radiology, and respecting what referrers want can strengthen those partnerships. A recent survey on report preferences found that referring physicians would welcome multimedia reports that have images automatically embedded alongside the narrative text of the report, according to results of the survey published in the December issue of Academic Radiology.
The survey was emailed to 1,800 attending physicians at Stanford University Medical Center, garnering 160 responses. Of the respondents, 89 percent were interested in reports with embedded images and nearly three-quarters of the interested physicians agreed that multimedia reports could improve interactions with radiologists.
That same issue of Academic Radiology featured a study of an electronic MR safety screening process that can speed exam time and improve MR safety. By embedding the MR safety screening in the electronic order entry process, researchers at the Cleveland Clinic found they could shave more than an hour off the mean time between first order and final report.
The American College of Radiology (ACR) also recently updated its Appropriateness Criteria, an essential tool for adding value to imaging through evidence-based guidelines on determining which studies are truly necessary. Of the 197 topic categories covered by ACR’s Appropriateness Criteria, 29 received updates in the latest version, and 12 new criteria have been added.
Check back next week as we take one last look back at RSNA and other ways to add value and boost patient-centered care discussed at the conference.
Evan joined TriMed in 2011, writing primarily for Health Imaging. Prior to diving into medical journalism, Evan worked for the Nine Network of Public Media in St. Louis. He also has worked in public relations and education. Evan studied journalism at the University of Missouri, with an emphasis on broadcast media.