Radiologist beware: Patients accessing imaging results much quicker after legislative change
Patients are obtaining their imaging results much quicker than in the past following a key legislative change, according to new research.
Passed in 2016, the 21st Century Cures Act required providers to grant patients greater access to their personal healthcare records. Researchers with the Mayo Clinic recently assessed the impact of this policy on radiology, sharing their findings Aug. 27 in JAMA Network Open.
They found outpatients saw a nearly 78% drop in the median time it took to access their radiology reports, falling from about 4.9 hours down to 1.1 after the Cures Act. That’s compared to a roughly 69% decrease in the median time for those treated on the inpatient or emergency department side at Mayo, falling from 9.1 hours to 2.8.
“These substantial decreases do not include the removal of the 36-hour embargo after implementation of the Cures Act,” radiologist Jordan R. Pollock, MD, MBA, MS, with Mayo Clinic Arizona in Scottsdale, and co-authors advised.
The analysis was conducted in 2022 after the act went into effect, investigating trends among patients who accessed their reports within the first 24 hours of release. Altogether, it included over 84,000 individuals treated on the inpatient/ED side and another nearly 336,000 outpatients. Prior to Cures, test results were delivered following an institutional-dependent delay to allow for care coordination and delivery of these results, the authors noted.
Pollock and colleagues believe members of the specialty should be aware of these figures and their potential impact. Critics of the legislation have expressed concern about patients reviewing reports before a physician and potentially discovering sensitive results such as cancer electronically, rather than in-person.
“After implementation of the Cures Act, patients in the outpatient setting viewed their examination results substantially quicker than patients in the inpatient and/or emergency department settings,” Pollock and co-authors concluded. “Ordering practitioners and radiologists should be aware that patients receive immediate access to finalized imaging reports, often within a few hours of result release.”
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.