Times slashed for x-ray results

CRITICAL x-ray reports for Clare patients are now available within 15 minutes when requested at the Mid-Western Regional Hospital, Ennis, thanks to a new award-winning radiology service. Ennis hospital is the only acute facility in the country using telemedicine to provide the majority of its main live radiology service.

Waiting times for over 20,000 radiology reports have been dramatically cut, thanks to the introduction of telemedicine at the hospital. Radiology reports from the emergency department are returned within 90 minutes, in-patient reports are back within three hours, while out-patient and GP routine requests are guaranteed in less than 48 hours, with an average of 10 hours.

Using the Health Link network, an x-ray report taken in Ennis hospital is read by a consultant off site and is directly provided to most GP surgeries in just over 10 hours on average.

According to figures obtained by The Clare Champion, there were 20,252 telemedicine images taken since the service was introduced in April 2011, including CT (1,131), ultrasound (1,955) and general plain film x-ray (17,166).

When patients are x-rayed in Ennis, the x-ray goes up on an IT system. It gets referred for reporting and the hospital prioritises it within agreed timeframes on the basis of emergency, urgent, in-patient or out-patient.

Management and staff at Ennis were celebrating this week after the hospital beat off stiff competition from bigger hospitals, including the Mater and St James’ in Dublin to scoop the Biomnis Innovation in Quality of Service Delivery Award.

Hospital manager, Frank Keane, was presented with the award at a gala ceremony in the Burlington Hotel, Dublin on Friday.

“It is a huge achievement for a small hospital like Ennis to win such a major award. It is testament to the hard work of staff in Ennis and in Global Diagnostics, who deliver the service on a daily basis,” he said.

“Three percent of images every month are randomly taken by a company based in Wellington, New Zealand, who audit what Ennis hospital is doing. The lowest efficacy on any score has been over 98%, a seal of approval on quality of the service,” he added.

Dr Billy O’Connell said the quality and feedback from this new radiology imaging service is excellent. Dr O’Connell also pointed out Clare patients can be sent directly for an x-ray in Ennis hospital once they have a form completed by a GP. A further improvement is that patients are seen by a doctor in the emergency department after the x-ray, which speeds up their entire treatment process.

A radiologist comes from Limerick to read films in the old way one day a week. The hospital also has the benefit of regular stringent checks from a Global Diagnostics clinical director on site.
He holds multidisciplinary meetings where he deals with any discrepancies and queries around x-rays.