Patient Safety/Risk Management Tips
Radiology Critical Diagnostic Imaging Findings
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Expedite critical/nonroutine results.
Ensuring the timely and reliable receipt of results in emergent or other nonroutine clinical situations is more important than their method of delivery. You will need to have processes in place that expedite the delivery of diagnostic imaging reports and ensure that the respective department or physician (such as surgery or the emergency department physician) receives them promptly. Include discrepant findings from any preceding interpretations.
Help your peers.
There is a reciprocal duty of information exchange. The referring physician or other relevant health care provider shares in the responsibility for obtaining results of imaging studies that he or she has ordered. The request for imaging should include relevant clinical information, a working diagnosis, and/or pertinent clinical signs and symptoms. The request should also include a specific question to be answered. Teach your peers what you need in order to facilitate an accurate diagnosis.
Consider the following strategies for nonroutine communications:
- Have a policy that defines which findings suggest a need for immediate or urgent intervention.
- Have a policy that defines when immediate communication is required on discrepancies between preliminary reports and final reports where a failure to act may adversely affect patient health.
- Communicate unexpected findings that may seriously affect the patient’s health.
- Document all nonroutine communications and include the time and method of communication—specifically, the name of the person to whom the communication was made.
- Use the communication technique that will most likely reach the attention of the treating or referring physician in time to provide the most benefit to the patient.
Follow safe practice recommendations:
- Identify who should receive the results.
- Identify who the results should go to when the ordering provider is not available.
- Define which imaging results require timely and reliable communication.
- Identify when imaging results should be actively reported to the ordering provider, and establish explicit time frames for this purpose.
- Identify how to notify the responsible provider(s) (i.e., what communication system works best).
- Establish a shared policy for uniform communication of all types of test results (laboratory, radiology, cardiology, pathology, etc.) to all recipients.
- Partner with patients in the communication of results.
For more information, see the Initiatives section of the Massachusetts Coalition for the Prevention of Medical Errors at www.macoalition.org.
J6835 8/07
By Susan Shepard, BSN, MSN, MA, Director of Patient Safety Education.
The guidelines suggested here are not rules, do not constitute legal advice, and do not ensure a successful outcome. The ultimate decision regarding the appropriateness of any treatment must be made by each health care provider in light of all circumstances prevailing in the individual situation and in accordance with the laws of the jurisdiction in which the care is rendered.