Party Line: Hospitalist James Dreer, DO, MS, highlighted a critical gap in patient care during ARRS26: most referring providers—including PCPs, specialists, and ER docs—are *not* confident interpreting their own imaging, relying almost entirely on the rad’s expertise.
Core Requirements: Vague reporting and poor layout lead to clinical uncertainty, unnecessary phone calls, and serious patient safety risks.
- Structure is Supreme: Clinicians strongly prefer structured reports over dense narrative text to find actionable diagnoses at a glance.
- Kill the Hedge: Terms like “compatible with” create confusion. Use confident language (e.g., “highly suspicious of”) so clinicians can act decisively.
- Drop the Filler: Phrases like “please correlate clinically” are often redundant and viewed as unhelpful by internal med docs.
- Pick Up the Phone: Direct communication for unexpected or emergent findings—like an incidental pulmonary embolism—drastically lowers mortality rates.
Follow-Up Factor: To “close the loop” and prevent safety misses, rads must change how they handle recommendations:
- Section-Specific: Follow-up recs should be placed in a dedicated, easy-to-find section.
- Visibility: Hiding follow-up needs within the body of a report increases the chance they will be overlooked, leading to missed diagnoses and non-adherence.
RadFYI: By understanding the hospitalist’s workflow and providing clear, structured, and confident recommendations, rads provide a value-added benefit that directly improves patient outcomes.
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