5 Facts About Quality Improvement in the Radiology Department

Quality improvement (QI) is a big deal in our Radiology Department! Our Quality Improvement division is a team of eight employees who are dedicated to improving the department by reviewing processes, identifying opportunities for improvement, and focusing on our employees and patients.

Here are five facts about our QI group:

1. We are a diverse group! Our team consists of a manager, two quality assurance specialists with nursing and technologist background, a patient advocate, a project manager, two x-ray technologists and one MRI technologist.
2. Our QI team has many years of experience, totaling 86 years of service at Cincinnati Children’s.
3. We love data! In order to understand when an improvement can be made, we first review data and what we currently do to see where we are before implementing any change.
4. We utilize a group of parents at Cincinnati Children’s called Radiology Family Advisors to help us with our changes. We ask the advisors questions about changes we are considering in our department to see what our parents think about the ideas. We make changes and consider new alternatives based on our parent feedback.
5. We identify several projects to focus on each year. Last year, with the help of our department managers and frontline staff, we successfully supported 15 projects ranging from reducing repeat imaging in X-ray and enhancing our MRI safety practices to improving patient experience by working on staff training and keeping our patients better informed about wait times.

Contributed by Rachel Smith, Manager-Quality Improvement and Compliance and edited by Glenn Miñano, BFA.