Improving Radiology Workflow with Automated Examination Tracking and Alerts

Abstract

The modern radiology workflow is a production line where imaging examinations pass in sequence through many steps. In busy clinical environments, even a minor delay in any step can propagate through the system and significantly lengthen the examination process. This is particularly true for the tasks delegated to the human operators, who may be distracted or stressed. We have developed an application to track examinations through a critical part of the workflow, from the image-acquisition scanners to the PACS archive. Our application identifies outliers and actively alerts radiology managers about the need to resolve these problems as soon as they happen. In this study, we investigate how this real-time tracking and alerting affected the speed of examination delivery to the radiologist. We demonstrate that active alerting produced a 3-fold reduction of examination-to-PACS delays. Additionally, we discover an overall improvement in examination-to-PACS delivery, evidence that the tracking and alerts instill a culture where timely processing is essential. By providing supervisors with information about exactly where delays emerge in their workflow and alerting the correct staff to take action, applications like ours create more robust radiology workflow with predictable, timely outcomes.