An Evaluation of the Impact of Clinically Embedded Reading Rooms on Radiologist-Referring Clinician Communication

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate whether locating reading rooms in clinical areas at a large tertiary care, academic hospital in the United States corresponds with increased rates of direct communication between radiologists and clinicians. Data recorded included the frequency, form, duration, and general purpose of communications. Two-tailed Fisher's exact tests were used to determine the statistical significance of differences between the frequencies of communication methods for the reading rooms included in the study. During the observation period, there were a total of 175 episodes of communication between radiologists and referring providers in the 4 study reading rooms. There was a highly significant difference (P < .0001) in the percentage of visits and critical test result management messages sent between embedded and nonembedded reading rooms, while the differences in the proportion of calls both to and from referring providers was not significant (P = .4468). Although the purpose of this study was to assess the impact of reading room location on radiologists' communications with referring providers, several alternative hypotheses could also explain the results. The value of this study emerges from the documentation of the high degree of variability among institutions in communication practices among different kinds of radiologists and referring physicians. The extent of these different practices among the 4 reading rooms has important implications for future studies of communication patterns between radiologists and referring providers as well as for designing effective interventions to enhance the role of radiologists as consultants.