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Operations Management

Strategies for Implementing a Standardized Structured Radiology Reporting Program

Published Online:Oct 10 2018https://doi.org/10.1148/rg.2018180040

Abstract

Overcoming the organizational and technical challenges of implementing a practice-wide standardized structured reporting program can be aided by the use of a deliberate strategy for both types of challenges.

Radiology practices are increasingly implementing standardized report templates to overcome the drawbacks of individual templates. However, implementing a standardized structured reporting program is not necessarily straightforward. This article provides practical guidance for radiologists who wish to implement standardized structured reporting in their practice. Challenges that radiology groups encounter tend to fall into two categories: technical and organizational. Defining and carrying out technical work can be tedious but tends to be relatively straightforward, whereas overcoming organizational challenges often requires changes in individuals’ strongly held values, beliefs, roles, and relationships. Established organizational change models can help frame the organizational strategy to implement a standardized structured reporting program. Once leadership support is secured, a standardized structured reporting committee can be convened to establish report priorities, standards, design principles, and guidelines. Report standards help to establish the common framework upon which all report templates are constructed, helping to ensure report consistency. By using these standards, committee members can create reports relevant to their subspecialties, which can then be edited for formatting and content. Once report templates have been developed, edited, and published, an abbreviated form of the same process can be used to maintain the reports, which can be accomplished with much less effort than that initially required to create the templates. After standardized structured report templates are implemented and become embedded in practice, most radiologists eventually appreciate the merits of the program.

©RSNA, 2018

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Article History

Received: Feb 26 2018
Revision requested: Mar 27 2018
Revision received: Apr 14 2018
Accepted: Apr 17 2018
Published online: Oct 10 2018
Published in print: Oct 2018