RAs ready to report quality measures

A majority of radiologist assistants (RAs) would be willing to help radiologists report quality measures, according to a new survey published by the American Society of Radiologic Technologists (ASRT).

Back in May, the ASRT sent its Radiologist Assistant Practice Survey 2015 to 262 RAs from its database. A total of 111 RAs completed the survey, which asked them questions about their career, their workplace and how often they perform certain tasks.

Over 57% of respondents said their employer currently participates in quality reporting systems, and over 67% said they would be willing to participate in voluntary reporting of quality measures.

Myke Kudlas, ASRT chief academic officer, told RadiologyBusiness.com the survey was an “environmental scan” to see what RAs were doing presently in the area of quality. If there is potential for them to help with reporting, it could be quite beneficial to both radiologists and patients.

“This is something radiologist assistants can do to really help out a radiologist,” Kudlas told RadiologyBusiness.com in a phone interview. “It kind of goes back to the definition of a radiologist assistant—assisting the radiologist. This is something they can take off their plate and allow radiologists to have more time to do direct patient care, interpretation, and that sort of thing.”

Some other statistics from the study include:

• All respondents review patient’s medical records to verify exam appropriateness on a weekly basis
• 98.8% of respondents assess risk factors that might contraindicate the procedure on weekly basis
• 81.3% of respondents perform an esophageal study on a weekly basis
• 84.7% of respondents never perform MR postprocessing, and 69.9% never perform CT postprocessing

In addition, the data showed that 71% of the respondents work at either a for-profit hospital or a non-for-profit hospital, while just over 9% worked at imaging centers. Kudlas said these numbers make sense considering the primary duties of an RA.

“What a radiologist assistant does is more in line with hospital work than an imaging center,” he said. “We’d expect to see CT techs and MR techs, a lot of them in imaging centers. But radiologist assistants aren’t doing as much imaging as they are doing procedural work.”

Now that they’ve checked the pulse of RAs in the their database, Kudlas said the ASRT will get busy analyzing the statistics.

“We’ve got some good data,” he said. “Now we have to get some information out of it.”