Trimming patient wait times, improving satisfaction with exam explanations, training staff to deliver difficult news and involving patients more extensively in the decision-making process are all signs of a practice that has made a commitment to patient-centered care in radiology. Those are also some of the specific improvements made by previous winners of Health Imaging’s Patient-Centric Imaging Awards.

Last year, we selected five winners from applications that came in from smaller independent practices and larger academic departments alike. This included Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, which had radiologists, technologists and child life specialists trained on delivering difficult news to patients.

Another winner was Georgia Regents Medical Center, whose staff told us about a review of processes from a patient-centered perspective that improved satisfaction among mammography patients, decreased contrast extravasations and reduced patient falls.

Invision Sally Jobe in Colorado highlighted their work aimed at involving breast imaging patients in the decision to consider supplemental screening and/or genetic counseling. Patients received a personalized letter with recommendations written in non-alarming language, and referring physicians were educated prior to implementing the direct-to-patient letters so they were better prepared to help counsel their patients.

You can read more about these efforts and the other winners in our story about the 2013 Patient-Centric Imaging Awards.

The time has come again to call for submissions. Has your practice conducted a quality improvement project inspired by the American College of Radiology’s Imaging 3.0 campaign? Do you have a colleague whose department was able to improve processes and reduce turnaround times? Technology upgrades also can lead to improvements in patient-centered care, so we  want to hear if a newly installed system has allowed you to better communicate findings to patients or their referring physicians.

If your organization has recently conducted a project to boost patient-centered care, submit the story to our nomination form. You can also nominate colleagues or other organizations whose work you admire. We’ll collect the responses over the coming weeks, and will select another five sites to highlight in an upcoming issue of Health Imaging.

Tell us your story.

-Evan Godt 
Editor – Health Imaging

egodt@trimedmedia.com