Ramin Khorasani

To assess the safety and cost savings of using wall suction and plastic canisters instead of evacuated bottles, currently in short supply, to drain, and collect large amounts of fluid during image-guided paracentesis procedures.

OBJECTIVE. One of the patient safety goals proposed by the Joint Commission urges hospitals to develop a policy for communicating critical test results and to measure adherence to that policy. We e...

OBJECTIVE. Communicating critical results of diagnostic imaging procedures is a national patient safety goal. The purposes of this study were to describe the system architecture and design of Alert...

OBJECTIVE. The purpose of this study was to assess radiologists' adherence to published guidelines for managing renal masses detected at abdominal CT at one institution and to a critical results communication policy. MATERIALS AND METHODS. A validated natural language processing tool supplemented by manual review was used to randomly assemble a cohort of 97 radiology reports from all abdominal CT reports (n = 11,952) generated from July 2010 to June 2011. Critical renal mass findings warranted consideration for surgery, intervention, or imaging follow-up and required direct, separate, and timely communication to the referrer in addition to the radiology report. Primary outcomes were adherence to guidelines and institutional policy for communicating critical results. Sample size allowed a 95% CI ± 5% for primary outcome. Pearson chi-square test was performed to assess whether radiology subspecialization was predictive of the primary outcome. RESULTS. Of all abdominal CT reports, 35.6% contained at least on...

OBJECTIVE. The objective of our study was to assess radiology utilization trends for emergency department (ED) patients from 1993 through 2012. MATERIALS AND METHODS. For this retrospective study, ...

The purpose of this study is to quantify the time expenditure associated with radiologist ordering of CT oral contrast media when using an integrated protocoling portal and to determine radiologists' perceptions of the ordering process. This prospective study was performed at a large academic tertiary care facility. Detailed timing information for CT inpatient oral contrast orders placed via the computerized physician order entry (CPOE) system was gathered over a 14-day period. Analyses evaluated the amount of physician time required for each component of the ordering process. Radiologists' perceptions of the ordering process were assessed by survey. Descriptive statistics and chi-square analysis were performed. A total of 96 oral contrast agent orders were placed by 13 radiologists during the study period. The average time necessary to create a protocol for each case was 40.4 seconds (average range by subject, 20.0-130.0 seconds; SD, 37.1 seconds), and the average total time to create and sign each contrast agent order was 27.2 seconds (range, 10.0-50.0 seconds; SD, 22.4 seconds). Overall, 52.5% (21/40) of survey respondents indicated that radiologist entry of oral contrast agent orders improved patient safety. A minority of respondents (15% [6/40]) indicated that contrast agent order entry was either very or extremely disruptive to workflow. Radiologist e-prescribing of CT oral contrast agents using CPOE can be embedded in a protocol workflow. Integration of health IT tools can help to optimize user acceptance and adoption.