Quality

The focus of quality improvement in healthcare is to bolster performance and processes related to diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. Leaders in this space also ensure the proper selection of imaging exams and procedures, and monitor the safety of services, among other duties. Reimbursement programs such as the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) utilize financial incentives to improve quality. This also includes setting and maintaining care quality initiatives, such as the requirements set by the Joint Commission.

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Multidisciplinary quality improvement initiative significantly improves on-time starts for cardiac MRI

Such delays can result in longer patient fasts, extended wait times, and poor synchronization of anesthesia induction, researchers detailed in JACR. 

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American College of Radiology adds 9 new topics to its influential imaging appropriateness criteria

The newest additions cover conditions such as invasive breast cancer, sepsis, and abdominal aortic aneurysm, ACR announced Tuesday. 

quality imaging appropriateness clinical decision support CAS AUC

Clinical decision support has little impact on image-ordering behaviors, single-center study finds

CDS only added 24 seconds to ordering clinicians' workflows and rarely led to these individuals changing their radiology request, experts wrote in JACR. 

radiology clock alarm turnaround time efficiency

Employing a full-time reading room coordinator boosts radiologist efficiency, reduces turnaround times

Few level 1 trauma centers employ such a position, typically tasked with fielding phone calls from referrers, triaging requests to residents and relaying critical results. 

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Use of CTPA for suspected pulmonary embolism in pregnancy surges 156% at 2 hospitals

Despite the marked increase, there was no corresponding uptick in either positive PE readings or pregnancies, experts detailed. 

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Medical specialists order low value, unnecessary imaging at higher rates than their peers

The findings are derived from an analysis of fee-for-service Medicare data recorded across nearly 600 U.S. health systems. 

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82% of CTA head and neck scans in 1 emergency department had no actionable findings

Nonphysician practitioners and ED residents also ordered a significantly greater proportion of such exams, experts detailed in JACR. 

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ACR sees burden and little benefit from CMS’s plan to tackle ‘excessive radiation dose’

The American College of Radiology is "urgently" asking that the agency rename the measure, worried that it could be spreading misinformation.

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Around the web

Health Imaging
Nearly $800,000 settlement offered to family of man who died during MRI exam

The patient, who was being cared for in the ICU, was not accompanied or monitored by nursing staff during his exam, despite being sedated.

Cardiovascular Business
Global shortage of nuclear imaging isotopes may be over

The nuclear imaging isotope shortage of molybdenum-99 may be over now that the sidelined reactor is restarting. ASNC's president says PET and new SPECT technologies helped cardiac imaging labs better weather the storm.

Cardiovascular Business
‘A huge win’: CMS significantly increases Medicare payments for cardiac CT

CMS has more than doubled the CCTA payment rate from $175 to $357.13. The move, expected to have a significant impact on the utilization of cardiac CT, received immediate praise from imaging specialists.