New Consulting Concept Devised for More Efficient Processes in Radiology

A consulting model called "Act on Radiology" has been developed to help improve workflows in radiology departments. Based on models for industry processes, an expert team evaluates the maturity level of clinical processes in a hospital radiology department or radiology practice.

For example, the experts evaluate the efficiency of workflows from admissions to a completed patient report. With the help of a database containing international guidelines and the reference values from the world's leading hospitals, the Siemens Healthcare (Erlangen, Germany) consultants then develop suitable measures for improvement.

With Act on Radiology, Siemens is using a new, specially developed consulting approach for healthcare that the company has already deployed in more than 20 European hospitals for process improvements in the clinical areas of stroke, cardiac insufficiency, and acute coronary syndrome. The model is based on the analyses of processes from the world's leading hospitals, and combines them with medical guidelines and current scientific results. This knowledge is used to define the best possible procedures for individual process steps. In radiology, the approach can show, for example, how technical resources and personnel can be utilized more efficiently. Moreover, the quality of clinical results is analyzed in order to develop recommendations on how the referring physicians can receive fast and precise results.

Act on Radiology is backed by an interdisciplinary expert team from Siemens: physicians specializing in radiology, strategy, and workflow consultants, as well as economists, information technology (IT) experts, engineers, and medical technicians. In only eight days, two of the Siemens consultants analyze the processes in a hospital radiology department or in a radiology practice. On a 1 to 5 scale, they determine the maturity level of complex clinical processes, using more than 500 individual criteria: Are the imaging systems used to such capacity that the department works efficiently? How long does it typically take until reports are available? After the status-quo assessment and a detailed results report, the consultants develop measures for the customer to optimize workflows in a measurable, sustainable way. For example, it is profitable for many departments to introduce a review system, in the form of controlled random samples, in order to secure continuously the quality of findings.

Siemens has successfully applied Act on Radiology at the first customer sites, including the University Hospital Göttingen (Germany). "The recommended solutions from the consulting project provided us with concrete measures tailored to our department," said Prof. Joachim Lotz, MD, medical director of the diagnostic radiology department at the University Hospital Göttingen. "It is amazing what Siemens could discover in only four days, even without having available key data from the hospital."

Siemens is planning to complete its "Act on" consulting approach with other relevant care areas, and is currently developing a model for process improvement in oncology.

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