VIDEO: Benjamin Strong, MD, of vRad, details the essential components of a quality assurance program and how to ensure radiologist accountability and participation.
Implementing a quality assurance program for a radiology group requires large amounts of data, and capturing that data is one the biggest hurdles to getting started, said Benjamin Strong, MD, medical director for Virtual Radiologic (vRad).
Strong advises groups start with the American College of Radiology’s Radpeer program, or something similar, which allows for peer review to be performed during the new routine interpretation of current images. “As a place to start, you just have to get that data,” he said in an interview.
What to do with the quality assurance information you’ve collected on the radiologists? Identify the flaws or problems, Strong said, and determine the best course of action. Often it’s a failure to develop and apply a search pattern, a skill Strong said is “woefully underemphasized in training and the practice of radiology.”
Perhaps issues arise at the end of a shift, when quality deteriorates, he said. The group can then determine if there should be a schedule change.
“It’s a matter of having that depth of data and those parameters by which we code,” he explained. “It really lets you identify a source of a problem and not just the fact that a problem exists.”
In this video, Strong elaborates on quality assurance programs, detailing:
• The essential components of a quality assurance program, including a way to capture and code large amounts of data.
• The way to ensure radiologist accountability and participation in the program.
A Victory for Radiology: New CMS Proposal Would Provide Coverage of CT Colonography in 2025
July 12th 2024In newly issued proposals addressing changes to coverage for Medicare services in 2025, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced its intent to provide coverage of computed tomography colonography (CTC) for Medicare beneficiaries in 2025.
The Reading Room: Artificial Intelligence: What RSNA 2020 Offered, and What 2021 Could Bring
December 5th 2020Nina Kottler, M.D., chief medical officer of AI at Radiology Partners, discusses, during RSNA 2020, what new developments the annual meeting provided about these technologies, sessions to access, and what to expect in the coming year.
ACR Collaborative Model Leads to 35 Percent Improvement with Mammography Positioning Criteria
July 1st 2024Noting significant variation with facilities for achieving passing criteria for mammography positioning, researchers found that structured interventions, ranging from weekly auditing of images taken by technologists to mechanisms for feedback from radiologists to technologists, led to significant improvements in a multicenter study.
New Study Shows Non-Radiologists Interpreting 28 Percent of Imaging for Medicare Patients
June 28th 2024While radiologists interpreted approximately 99 percent of all non-cardiac CT, MRI and nuclear medicine studies in hospital and emergency department settings for Medicare beneficiaries, new research shows significantly less radiologist review of cardiac imaging and office-based imaging.