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Keywords:
Workforce, Quality assurance, Education and training, Diagnostic procedure, Cost-effectiveness, Ultrasound, MR, CT, Professional issues, Management
Authors:
Y. Giambrone1, P. Dutey-Magni2, D. Tsukagoshi2, A. Malhotra2; 1Harlow/UK, 2London/UK
DOI:
10.1594/ecr2015/C-1612
Conclusion
Radiology departments face increasing financial and workload pressures due to a rise in demand from an ageing population and the advance of expensive imaging technology. Over-investigation is also likely to contribute to rising healthcare expenditure. Many hospitals have introduced measures such as service-line reporting to tackle this issue.
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One would expect non-radiology staff to under-appreciate the cost of investigations and therefore perhaps under-estimate the cost.
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This research demonstrates the overall poor knowledge of the cost of radiological investigations amongst the sampled groups.
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However the groups generally over-estimated the costs of radiological investigations.
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NHS tariffs are not well publicised or taught.
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Private practice tariffs are well publicised and considerably higher than NHS costs.
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Improved knowledge and awareness of the relative cost of imaging could help optimise imaging requests.
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Those who had received some information about costs were closer to the true cost of the examination (p = 0.009).
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A collaborative effort must be made to curb imaging over-utilisation.
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This can be achieved by developing evidence-based criteria for appropriate radiological investigations,
reinforcing guidelines used in requesting imaging and training requesters of diagnostic imaging about costs.