ECR 2012 - MIR@ECR - Communication with our Partners

Three presentations were given in this session.

First dr. Kahn talked about computerized physician order entry and decision support. He approached this from the side of the appropriateness criteria. He stated that those criteria are not meant for the radiologist but for the referring physicians. However, delivering it to them in an enormous pdf file is not very efficient. It should be integrated into the exam ordering process using computerized systems inside the electronic health record. By doing this the referring physician can enter the properties of the patients and get decision support on their order. This should reduce the number of wrong diagnostic tests or may even reduce the number of diagnostic tests. Kahn remarked that we should be talking about a radiology examination request and not an order. Furthermore he stated that decision support should be regarded as advise and not the law and that a physician should be able to reject the advice.

Next, dr. Centoze gave a presentation about communication of urgent and unexpected findings. He started to state that efficient and correct communication is crucial. ESR has release guideliness on communication of urgent and unexpected findings published in insights in imaging. Ideally an automatic alert and feedback system should be implemented. Urgent information should always be communicated directly with the referring physician. Unexpected findings could be communicated with other methods like e-mail .

Finally, a presentation on implications of reporting infrastructure - general reading room vs. Individual office was given by dr. Strickland. She presented her personal preference of a general reporting room and discussed pros and cons of that choice against private offices. The pros are:
- less costs because of maximum use of the workstations
- optimized ergonomics in the central reading rooms
- camaraderie: reporting is a social activity/teambuilding
- facilitates clinician access
- enhances inter-radiologist consultation
The perceived cons are
- noise
- personalized workstation settings lost
- pre-existing building architecture
Extra small reporting rooms could be beneficial to have. But they should not be personal.