Department of Radiology, Stanford University, Richard M. Lucas Center, 1201 Welch Rd, Office P285, Stanford, CA 94305-5488, USA. dlrubin@ stanford.edu
Radiographics. 2011 Oct;31(6):1511-27. doi: 10.1148/rg.316105207.
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.
质量正成为放射学领域的一个关键问题。衡量和改进质量不仅对于确保医疗服务的最佳效果并符合日益增加的监管要求至关重要，而且对于应对当前导致放射服务商品化的趋势也至关重要。实施质量改进计划的主要挑战是开发收集与质量护理相关知识的方法，并将这些知识提供给护理点的从业者。放射学中有许多需要衡量、监测和改进的质量维度，包括检查的适当性、程序方案、解释的准确性、影像学结果的沟通以及衡量和监测质量、安全性和效率方面的绩效改进。信息学提供了可以使放射科医生衡量和改进质量的关键技术。但是，很少有机构认识到信息学方法在提高安全性和质量方面提供的机会。大多数医院的信息技术基础设施有限，并且信息学技术的采用也不理想。医疗机构可以通过信息学来应对评估和改进放射学质量的挑战。
