Adoption of an integrated radiology reading room within a urologic oncology clinic: initial experience in facilitating clinician consultations

Purpose: The authors describe their initial experience in implementing an integrated radiology reading room within a urologic oncology clinic, including the frequency and nature of clinician consultations and the perceived impact on patient management by clinicians.

Methods: A radiology reading room was established within an office-based urologic oncology clinic in proximity to the surgeon's work area. A radiologist was present in this reading room for a 3-hour shift each day. The frequency and nature of consultations during these shifts were recorded. Also, the clinic's staff completed a survey assessing perceptions of the impact of the integrated reading room on patient management.

Results: One hundred two consultations occurred during 57 included dates (average, 1.8 consultations per shift): 52% for review of external cases brought in by patients on discs, 43% for review of internal cases, and 5% for direct review by the radiologist of imaging with patients. The maximum number of consultations during a single shift was 8. All of the clinic's urologists indicated that >90% of consultations benefited patient care. The clinicians indicated tendencies to view consultations as affecting management in the majority of cases, to be more likely to seek consultation for outside imaging when the radiologist was on site, and to be less likely to repeat outside imaging when the radiologist was on site.

Conclusions: The integrated reading room within the clinic has potential to improve the quality of care, for instance by facilitating increased review of outside imaging studies and thereby potentially reducing duplicate ordering and by enabling occasional direct image review with patients by radiologists.