Informatics in radiology: Measuring and improving quality in radiology: meeting the challenge with informatics

Abstract

Quality is becoming a critical issue for radiology. Measuring and improving quality is essential not only to ensure optimum effectiveness of care and comply with increasing regulatory requirements, but also to combat current trends leading to commoditization of radiology services. A key challenge to implementing quality improvement programs is to develop methods to collect knowledge related to quality care and to deliver that knowledge to practitioners at the point of care. There are many dimensions to quality in radiology that need to be measured, monitored, and improved, including examination appropriateness, procedure protocol, accuracy of interpretation, communication of imaging results, and measuring and monitoring performance improvement in quality, safety, and efficiency. Informatics provides the key technologies that can enable radiologists to measure and improve quality. However, few institutions recognize the opportunities that informatics methods provide to improve safety and quality. The information technology infrastructure in most hospitals is limited, and they have suboptimal adoption of informatics techniques. Institutions can tackle the challenges of assessing and improving quality in radiology by means of informatics.