Critical imaging data fall through cracks in IT

Referring clinicians failed to acknowledge over one-third of abnormal imaging results in an outpatient setting, even when a computerized system designed to alert them was used, according to Dr. Hardeep Singh and colleagues at Baylor College of Medicine.

Researchers analyzed 1017 outcomes of abnormal imaging alerts in an ambulatory multispecialty clinic that were transmitted to providers via the electronic medical record. Over one-third of these cases were not acknowledged by the referring clinicians, while 4% of critical imaging results remained unnoticed for about a month (J Am Med Inform Assoc 2007;14[4]:459-466).