Measuring quality in a radiology practice means many things, and they might be different depending on the radiologist you talk to, but a recent survey pinpointed the top three concerns and radiology workflow (turnaround time) ranks at the top.
The survey by Radiology Business Management Association sought to find out what metrics radiologists were using to track their quality of service, and in addition to turnaround time, they found call reports and appropriate use of advanced imaging to be at the top.
Turnaround time is defined as the span of time from when an exam is ordered to its completion. These times can vary depending on how much of the work is efficiently done on premise and how much of it is farmed out to third parties.
Peer review showed up as the second-most popular metric radiology offices are using to determine quality, according to the survey. Around 52% of the survey pool said they use the American College of Radiology’s RadPeer solution to determine their peer review ratings. The remainder used their own internal systems.
Critical results reporting is the third-most popular quality metric radiologists follow. This involves, for 87% of the respondents, looking at professional services agreements, while the others said they use critical results for payer contracts.
Cloud Solutions
This survey highlights the concerns of radiologists in areas that are affected by radiology workflow. Everyone is on a search for better radiology workflow and finding efficiencies wherever possible, and a great place to find that is in cloud-based solutions. For example, accountability and quality go hand-in-hand. Measuring quality in teleradiology solutions often weighs heavily on how much accountability is involved in the process. If your quality rating is low, it’s probably because every teleradiology exam you send out seems like it goes to a black hole.
With a workflow solution, such as TeleRAD360 from OffSite Image Management, outdated platforms are pushed to the side as customers get total exam accountability with integrated RIS, imaging worklist management, voice recognition, report distribution, cloud diagnostic viewing and complete mobility.
Take the situation where an exam priority suddenly changes. With most traditional solutions, you have no way to make that change. With TeleRAD360 it is easily accomplished. You get total visibility and know where your exam is in every stage of the process.
Radiologists, imaging facilities, urgent care centers, large urban hospitals and rural hospitals can all gain the same advantage with better analytics for strategic analysis and planning. It’s a quality-assurance solution that will provide innumerable benefits the more you use it.
Contact us at OffSite and let’s discuss our many cloud-based radiology workflow solutions that will benefit you, from mammography to cloud PACS to VNA services and anything in between.
