Background
Technological advances in medicine have given physicians the tools to diagnose and treat diseases much more quickly and accurately than they did a generation ago. Diagnostic imaging techniques have also improved over the years and have provided tremendous benefits to the patients. However, the use of diagnostic imaging technologies is associated with some degree of patient safety risk. First and foremost among these risks is the potential for harm related to excess exposure to ionizing radiation. According to AHRQ approximately 40% of patients diagnosed with cancer received radiation therapy at some point in their treatment. As the use of radiotherapy for certain types of cancer has grown, providers and researchers have raised concerns about the safety of radiation exposure. Reduction of unnecessary radiation exposure by justification of radiological medical procedures is a major goal for the Global Initiative.
Problem
Medcare hospital is a multispecialty hospital and as per the radiology utilization approx. more than 200 CT scans are performed per month. In 2018, around 3000 patients underwent CT-scan evaluations. We cannot also avoid the fact that CT emits a powerful dose of radiation, in some cases equivalent to about 200 chest X-rays.
The Medcare radiation safety program includes quality control parameters for all the diagnostic equipment and protocols for patient and staff safety. However the current system is lacking to monitor real time data regarding maximum amount of radiation dose delivered to the patient during diagnostic procedures. In case any monitoring information is required it is totally dependent on the manufacturer company.
Solutions
teamplay is a cloud-based software platform which uses data obtained directly from the equipment and applies analytics to this data to allow monitoring of the functioning of the Radiology department on a real time basis. As the data is taken directly from the equipment; data integrity is assured, and manual data capture errors can be eliminated. The data uploaded to the cloud is completely anonymized, ensuring patient privacy.
Objective
1. To monitor the current dose level and deviations if any to both internal and national threshold
2. Drill-down, pinpoint issues and help decision- makers outline measures to resolve them
3. Standardization and objective comparison, with the integrated Radlex Playbook lexicon
4. Size-Specific Dose Estimates (SSDE) and effective dose calculation
Control Plan
To make sure the implied solution is working fine, a control plan is established. If an incorrect scan protocol is used, the protocol parameters stored on the CT scanner can be accessed with teamplay protocols and measures to optimize the scan protocol can be directly triggered.
Results outcome and share success
The dashboard on the Siemens Healthineers teamplay home screen indicates how many examinations have exceeded the internal limit of the hospital within a defined time period. As per the dashboard in April and May 2019, a total of 411 tests were performed and 5 were identified as exceeding the set dose limits. teamplay dose clearly lists all dose outliers and makes it possible to annotate them. To determine the root cause for dose outliers, the outliers can be analyzed and compared in detail with regards to modality, body region, operator, location and exam type. The resulting information provides a solid foundation for suitable countermeasures. If the cause for a dose outlier can be attributed to a faulty CT scan protocol for example, users can use teamplay protocols to immediately access the protocol parameters saved in the CT scanner and initiate measures to optimize the scan protocol. It also helps to identify the operator related issues which can be used to evaluate the competency of radiographer. This project would also help us to indicate reduction in the number of dose events and Median Radiation Dose for specified anatomic parts being scanned as compared to that at the beginning of the project. As a successful deployment and 1st in the region, Siemens Healthineers requested Medcare to be a reference site in the region for their clients.
Contact
