RADIOLOGY & IMAGING
Alteredimages:Reducing diagnostic waiting times
With a shortage of 1600 radiologists anticipated by 2022, Mark Ayears, radiology sales manager at Change Healthcare, examines the latest figures released by the Royal College of Radiologists in its annual workforce report.
The development of an enterprise-wide imaging strategy is now a major priority for senior management within the NHS. As organisations battle to reduce diagnostic waiting times and accelerate patient access to treatment against a backdrop of ever-increasing demand, UK radiology once again finds itself burdened with escalating pressures. Recent figures from the Royal College (RCR) show that senior
of Radiologists1
radiologists around the UK have seen a 30% increase in their workload of reading and interpreting studies between 2012 and 2017. However, figures also show that the number of consultant radiologists in England has gone up by just 15% in that time – figures which just don’t match. Additionally, according to the annual workforce report released by the Royal College of Radiologists,2
Yet, despite the gathering storm clouds, there may be sunshine on the horizon. New technologies could provide a simple solution to the staffing, workflow and quality issues that are creating radiology bottlenecks and stifling patient care. And so, as current contracts come up for renewal and NHS organisations embark on a wave of imaging procurements, senior healthcare leaders are sensing the opportunity to impact meaningful change right across their local health economies.
The most progressive are recognising
the important role that enterprise imaging solutions can play in helping them meet the challenges of delivering integrated care beyond the boundaries of their local organisations.
a shortage of at least
1600 radiologists is anticipated by 2022. This is having, and will continue to have, a detrimental impact on costs, as to cope with the shortage of radiologists, NHS hospitals spent 116 million pounds on outsourcing patient scans in 2017. The combination of increased demand and insufficient specialist resource is, in itself, having major implications for workflow and patient pathways in individual NHS organisations – and as RCR President Dr Nicola Strickland said, urgent action is vital to cut the current and predicted spending. But the wider impact on the cost, efficiency and quality of patient care is being felt across the care continuum throughout local health economies. It’s little wonder that the issue is focusing the minds of the executive office. With the NHS already struggling to deliver five-day services, the prospect of delivering seven-day services is only bringing added anxiety - not least because the limited availability of diagnostic imaging at weekends has been flagged by government as a key area for improvement.
The key drivers for radiology procurements have evolved considerably since the days of the more traditional imaging projects. Historically, implementations were focused at the departmental level, with radiologists, cardiologists and associated clinicians given budgetary autonomy to choose the systems they wanted.
This naturally contributed to the NHS- wide problem of having disparate IT systems that did not talk to each other, and it created
New technologies could provide a simple solution to the staffing, workflow and quality issues that are creating radiology bottlenecks and stifling patient care.
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Mark Ayears, radiology sales manager at Change Healthcare
a silo culture that Trust leadership teams are, in reality, still trying to dismantle. Alongside this, CEOs are also under intense pressure to increase operational productivity and efficiency while lowering operating costs. Interoperable systems and indeed organisations, sharing integrated data can be a vital mechanism in achieving these goals.
There is now widespread recognition that technology procurements can no longer remain a departmental decision. Therefore, as it becomes clear that connecting data across departmental boundaries can drive improvements to patient care, systems procurement has become firmly established as a Board-level strategic decision with enterprise-wide considerations.
Gateway to a wider world
This is certainly the case with diagnostic imaging. Radiology is so often the patient gateway to the right treatment pathways, particularly in life-changing disease areas such as cancer, cardiac and musculoskeletal disorders. But flaws in traditional methodologies have meant that vital radiology data may not follow the patient as they journey along the care pathway and across organisational boundaries. In many cases even access to images and reports within NHS organisations is constrained by departmental walls. The impact on patient flow, escalation, diagnosis and treatment can be severe. Managed poorly, radiology can regress from being a gateway to the appropriate pathway to being an inadvertent barrier to it.
NOVEMBER 2018
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