Increased productivity has long been the raison d'etre for new MR scanners and upgrades. In the first couple of decades since MR became a clinical modality, vendors concentrated on scan time. But recently their focus, and that of the imaging community at large, has changed. Today it's all about the length of the exam, minimizing the time from when a patient walks in the door until that patient slides off the table. And for good reason.
Improving throughput by one patient per week, at a reimbursement of $500 per exam, adds $26,000 in annual revenue. Increase it by one patient per day, and the bottom line balloons by $182,000.
Whereas the length of a scan was once the deciding factor in how long it took to handle a patient, now it's heavily dependent on patient handling as well. Fast sequences, parallel imaging, and postprocessing algorithms have accelerated scans so much that even the most complex scans are down to a couple minutes or so. Artifacts that once threw a monkey wrench into abdominal scans are gone. And the long, narrow tubes that used to scare the bejesus out of veteran and newbie patients alike have been replaced by squat, wide bores with tapered edges that calm the nervous patient, fending off the fidgeting and dissent that often doomed scans in the past.
With these advances has come an emphasis on "workflow," specifically the time that staff spend with patients preparing them for a scan. Coils integrated with the patient table save a step or two for the technologist, as does preprogrammed software that triggers the exact and reproducible series of sequences needed to complete different types of exams.
But as important as these technological advances are, no less important are the human touches: placing a cool, damp cloth across the eyes and offering ear plugs to dampen the noise; starting a heparin block in preparation for a contrast IV while explaining to the patient what will happen and when; scheduling time blocks and then adjusting those blocks to keep the scanner on time.
