X-rays Often Repeated for Patients in Developing Countries

IAEA Moves to Help Improve Quality of Medical Radiography

Patients in developing countries often need to have X-ray examinations repeated so that doctors have the image quality they need for useful medical diagnosis, the IAEA is learning. The findings come from a survey involving thousands of patients in 45 hospitals and 12 countries of Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe.

"Poor image quality constitutes a major source of unnecessary radiation to patients in developing countries," emphasizes Dr. Madan Rehani of the IAEA Division of Radiation, Waste and Transport Safety, which carried out the survey under technical cooperation (TC) projects of the IAEA. "Fortunately, we´re moving forward to help countries improve the situation and have shown definite improvements."

source: IAEA

Premerus Presents Radiology Cost Simulation Study at Nation’s First Diagnostic Error in Medicine Conference

NASHVILLE, Tenn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Premerus, the industry’s first and only diagnostic management company (www.premerus.com) will deliver a poster presentation, “Improving Diagnostic Accuracy in Radiologist’s Interpretations with Potential Savings,” at the nation’s first-ever national conference dedicated specifically to diagnostic error in medicine, May 31, 2008, Arizona Grand Resort, Phoenix, AZ (www.Amia.org/meetings/s08/dem.asp). Co-sponsored by American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the conference will bring together some of the nation’s leading experts in diagnostic medicine to summarize the current state of the field by reviewing research in the clinical and cognitive sciences, and to catalyze emerging ideas that should be implemented to minimize diagnostic error in the future.

Based on the results of a Premerus study comparing the medical imaging interpretations of general radiologists to those of subspecialty radiologists, the presentation will show a 44 percent level of non-concordance (disagreement) in interpretation between the two groups. The study concludes that subspecialty readings were found more likely to be accurate and efficient, with significant potential cost savings. With these results, Premerus estimates that subspecialty radiology can generate savings to health plans and benefits payers of approximately $4.45 per member per month, or $53M annually for a million-member plan. There were 575,000 members in the heath plans studied, allowing for potential annual savings of over $27,000,000.

source: Business Wire

Radiographic Scans With Intravenous Dye Rarely Cause Clinically Significant Kidney Injury

Radiographic procedures such as computed tomography (CT) scans that use intravenous dye rarely cause clinically significant acute kidney injury in patients with mild baseline kidney disease, according to a study appearing in the September 2008 issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society Nephrology (CJASN). The findings reveal that these procedures are safe for the large and growing number of individuals who undergo them as well as give physicians reassuring information on patient risk.

For some CT scans and other procedures used to visualize parts of the internal body, a contrast material such as dye is injected into a blood vessel so that various structures and organs can be seen more easily. Previous studies have shown that the administration of contrast dye into blood vessels can cause acute kidney injury, or the rapid loss of kidney function due to damage to the kidneys. However, this research has traditionally been conducted in patients undergoing angiographic procedures that are done to detect abnormalities in the blood vessels. Less is known about the risk of acute kidney injury in outpatients who receive intravenous dye for CT scans. This information would be valuable to physicians, because patients who are considered at risk of kidney injury from these procedures should receive certain preventive interventions.

source: Medical News Today

Patients in X-ray review face 'abominable' service (Ireland)

RADIOLOGY services in the north-east are in disarray, and the Health Service Executive's (HSE) promise of rechecking some 6,000 X-rays there within two months is a "physical impossibility".

Dr Mary Grehan, a Dundalk councillor and founder of the Association of General Practitioners, said the already overstretched radiology service in the north-east would not be able to handle the extra 750 X-rays a week required to meet that deadline without extra staff.

Some 4,950 patients, meanwhile, face an anxious wait to find out if their X-rays and CT scans were misdiagnosed.

"It's a physical impossibility and patients are already worried by this," according to Dr Grehan.

source: Independent.ie

Radiology time-planning causes stroke delays (U.K.)

GPs are being urged to refer patients with TIA and stroke quickly, but poor organisation in radiology units means over half wait longer than 24 hours for diagnostic scans.

Audit data shows that 55 per cent of patients admitted to hospital with suspected stroke wait more than 24 hours to undergo a diagnostic MRI.

A sub-analysis of the stroke audit of all hospitals in England, Wales and Northern Ireland in 2006 shows that although 93 per cent of patients are scanned after admission, just 9 per cent were scanned within three hours of suspected stroke and 45 per cent within 24 hours.

source: Healthcarerepublic

Radiology imaging: Beauty, in the eye of the beholder or radiologist?

Peer review is widely accepted as a reliable method to consistently deliver excellence. However, many believe technology has swept away the peer review process for many professions in medicine including radiology.

In a presentation at the 2008 SIIM conference, Dr. Paul Nagy, from the University of Maryland School of Medicine, said he considered PACS to be a great system for creating a quality assurance program. This would provide radiology departments a quantitative evaluation of image quality and, in this particular incidence, radiological technologists would be placed under the spotlight.

"Peer review is a powerful motivator that we do not utilize enough," says Nagy. In today's radiology practices most track the level of image quality indirectly by monitoring the RT's rework or better yet the radiologists' complaints. Though useful in trying to minimize errors, voluntary incident reporting does not help raise the culture of quality, he adds.

source: Medicexhange

GE Healthcare Joins with M*Modal to Deliver Next Generation of Radiology Reporting Technology

SEATTLE, WA, SIIM 2008, May 15, 2008 -- GE Healthcare IT, a division of General Electric Company (NYSE: GE) and a leading provider of clinical, financial and administrative information technology solutions, today announced a partnership agreement with M*Modal, a leading provider of advanced speech understanding solutions, to deliver the next generation of radiology reporting technology. The announcement was made at the 2008 Annual Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine (SIIM) Conference being held May 15-18 in Seattle, WA.

With the aim to transition the industry from speech recognition to speech understanding, the agreement will incorporate M*Modal’s advanced speech technology, AnyModal™ Conversational Documentation Services (CDS), as part of GE’s Centricity RIS-IC Reporting module. The solution will aim to benefit physicians and radiologists with higher process efficiency, more accurate clinical documentation and dictation without changes in workflow. In addition, the technology is designed to continually learn, so the more it is used, the more accurate it becomes.

source: GE Healthcare

Starpoint Global Provides New Spin on PACS Conversion

(Starpoint Global Services, Chapel Hill, NC) - A new solution to the ever-present woes of film storage and digitization for Radiology departments and practices has arrived in the form of Starpoint's X-ray On Demand. X-ray On Demand (XOD) is a unique solution offered by Starpoint Global Services that bridges the physical and digital radiology divide. Patient films are stored off-site, then requested via telephone, fax or via a Web-portal called RSWeb, and then pulled at the Starpoint Information Management Center. The films are digitized and formatted into a "DICOM" (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) image that can be read and archived by standard PACS, regardless of the vendor. This digitized image is then window leveled and combined with an indexing of patient demographic and exam information, encrypted for security, and sent directly into a hospital's PACS over a secure connection using a Virtual Private Network (VPN). They are then available for analysis and comparison with existing digital images from within the hospital's PACS.

source: DotMed News

MedQuist Introduces Robust Integration between

Mount Laurel, NJ, May 6, 2008 — MedQuist Inc. (Pink Sheets: MEDQ.PK)
has recently developed and released an enhanced integration
capability between its SpeechQ for Radiology™ interactive
speech recognition solution and various medical imaging
Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS). This
integration allows radiologists to move seamlessly between
the two applications and significantly improve their
productivity. The first PACS solution to take advantage
of this robust integration is Philips iSite™.

With this integration enhancement, radiologists can
quickly create a diagnostic report of their findings
and provide this information to patients’ physicians
and caregivers.

source: MedQuist

Radiology company settles in man's death

Mike Allen

A company contracted with Carilion Clinic hospitals to interpret X-rays over the Internet has agreed to pay $500,000 to the estate of a Roanoke man who died after a physician failed to diagnose his internal bleeding.

In agreeing to the settlement, Nighthawk Radiology Services denies liability for any negligence in the death of 47-year-old Jay Lynn Brandon in 2007.

Brandon's death "was a huge tragedy," said Dan Frith, who filed the wrongful death lawsuit in September on behalf of Brandon's mother. "It didn't need to happen."

Brandon died from an aneurysm in his chest that ruptured. Had he received surgery, the odds are excellent that he would still be alive today, Frith said.

source: Roanoke.com