Diagnostic Imaging

From HMCwiki

Diagnostic Imaging is a dynamic area within healthcare. Below are some of the topics with which many organizations struggle. The HMCwiki contains free and open content that allows you and others to collaborate on important issues surrounding these and other topics.

Flex Staffing

Cross-training

Cross-training staff on the off-shift and weekends has helped avoid the addition of staff while volume has grown steadily over the years. Currently have 10 RT's cross-trained to do CT brain and stone studies. This has virtually eliminated delays in imaging emergency patients by having on-site versus on-call staff.

Group Inurement Issues

Providing support for a Radiologist or Group Practice beyond your facility's scope of practice, within your facility, could lead to legal issues related to inurement.

CR

Picture Archiving and Communication Systems(PACS)

• Film Utilization - Referring physicians

Reduce Contrast Media Expense

Patient Throughput

Minimize the impact of patient no-shows

Analyze your operations to determine the amount of resources being unnecessarily consumed by patients who fail to show up for their scheduled appointments. Minimize this waste by taking a pro-active stance. For example, try sending patients a reminder 30 days before their scheduled procedure to see if "no-show" rate declines.

Remove backlogs in scheduling MRIs

Since decreasing MRI backlog will allow you to pump more volume through existing resources, improvements in scheduling will help improve your overall cost per procedure. To improve your scheduling process, first quantify the backlog in your MRI service and then identify the top obstacles which contribute to elongated wait times. For example, are staffing shortages driving your backlog or are emergent cases creating road blocks in your process? Since each obstacle will necessitate a separate management strategy, it is important that you first identity what your key problems are.

Some examples of successful backlog reduction strategies include:

• Adding one appointment to the beginning and end of each day
• Expanding hours to include Saturday and Sunday services
• Extensively training staff on complicated procedure to minimize recall procedures
• Customize appointment times according to exam diagnosis and/or protocol length

Develop Detailed Scanning Protocol to Reduce Repeat Exams

Focus on reducing the number of exams that have to be redone and the time patients have to wait for a CT to be reviewed by a Radiologist. Every time Diagnostic Imaging has to call a patient back for a bad CT, productivity drops and patient wait time is increased. More detailed Radiology scanning protocols can go along way in making sure the exam is right the first time. Based on a certain diagnosis, the Radiologists selects a detailed scanning protocol at the beginning of the day for all scheduled CTs. This method tends to be more efficient than holding the patient until the Radiologist reviews the scan (causing more interruptions for the Radiologist). With scanning protocol, the Rad Tech monitors the scan and releases the patient.

Review Mobile MRI Services for cost effectiveness

Before thinking about contracting out this service, plan for the future by ensuring that your Radiologists work with you to decide upon the exams that they feel comfortable doing. The cost effectiveness of contracting out mobile MRI services is furthermore maximized when you are able get the service provider to join in on the volume risks by providing marketing and education to referring physicians.

If you would like to provide feedback or discuss the content of this article, please visit the discussion page. To be automatically notified by email of any changes or additions to the article or discussions about this article, please click here.