Where Does Radiologist-Referrer Communication Go Wrong?

There’s room for improvement when it comes to radiologist-referrer communication — according to a new study published in the American Journal of Roentgenology. Eugene Won, MD, and Andrew B. Rosenkranz used New York University Langone Medical Center’s electronic medical records to evaluate informal consultations between referrers and radiologists over the span of three years that were considered incomplete or inaccurate. Their findings resulted in several recommendations to facilitate stronger patient management.

According to the research, only 18.7 percent of the physicians’ notes mentioned the consulting radiologist’s name, and a small portion of these notes indicated a different radiologist than the patient’s original one or a radiologist from an outside facility. They found that 33.9 percent of notes pertaining to a prior examination actually resulted in a new finding, a change in the diagnosis severity level, or “a change in management recommendation.” Of these amended notes, 24.6 percent were recorded by the radiologist through an addendum, and 92.9 percent of these additional notes concurred with the referring physician.

Although referring physicians and radiologists are commonly in agreement in terms of the addendums, the study’s authors were alarmed by the sparse mention of the radiologists’ names. “Given these findings, solutions are needed to encourage more-complete documentation of informal consultations by radiologists,” they write. “Although we do not assert that additional documentation is necessarily warranted when a radiologist simply agrees with one’s own earlier interpretation, documentation is required for any communication that may alter patient management.”