More articles from Practice Perspectives
- A Call to Improve the Visibility and Access of the American College of Radiology Practice Parameters in Neuroradiology: A Powerful Value Stream Enhancer for Both Neuroradiologists and Patients
The authors suggest that practitioners gain a high degree of familiarity with accessing practice parameters. Doing so will provide additional reference and access to the practice parameters when medical literature searches are undertaken or when questions arise regarding best practices. Such an approach will ensure that future neuroradiology clinical guidelines or technical standards documents are provided as broad an exposure as possible. This effort could enhance the visibility and accessibility of the quality of practice for neuroradiologists, provide needed clinical guidance to practice state-of-the-art neuroradiology/radiology, and ensure the visibility of our valuable contributions to both individual patient care and collective patient outcomes.
- Interobserver Agreement in the Interpretation of Outpatient Head CT Scans in an Academic Neuroradiology Practice
Repeatability of outpatient head CT interpretations performed in an academic practice was assessed in 119 randomly selected studies. These were blindly read twice by 8 neuroradiologists. Differences in location and severity of findings occurred in 9.2% of cases and contradictory findings in 15.1%. Thus, discrepancies in double-blind interpretations were more common than reported in peer-review quality assurance programs.
- Physician Self-Referral and Imaging Use Appropriateness: Negative Cervical Spine MRI Frequency as an Assessment Metric
Five hundred cervical spine MRI studies,half ordered by referring physicians who owned scanners and received technical fees and half by physicians who did not, were reviewed for percentage of negative results and number of concomitant shoulder MRIs performed. There were 17.3% more negative scans in the financial-interest group. Patients in this group were also more likely to undergo shoulder MRI.
- Critical Findings: Timing of Notification in Neuroradiology
These authors attempted to determine the time between identification of a critical finding and verbal communication with the primary caregiver. Ninety-one critical findings identified by trainees and attending physicians were analyzed. The mean time from study acquisition to critical finding discovery was 62 minutes and from then to a telephone call was 3.7 minutes (direct caregiver communication within 15 minutes for 94% of cases). During night or weekend shifts, mean notification times increased and sources of delay were inaccurate contact information, physician unavailability (shift change/office closed), patient transfer to a different service, or lack of responsiveness from caregivers.