At Cincinnati Children’s, we strive for patients to have access to appointments as close as possible to the day they schedule them. Operations and equipment are always changing around here, and we adjust!
Our goal for this fiscal year has been access—and we are working hard so patients have access to a “as soon as possible” Radiology appointment time. Nearly two years ago, we formed a team consisting of technologists, nurses, anesthesia providers, radiologists, and scheduling coordinators to begin working on access. We focused especially on MRI due to high demand. When we began working on access, our access to an MRI appointment that requires general anesthesia was over a 30-day wait. Over the last year, with many interventions, our MRI access to appointments requiring anesthesia had improved to just around 10 days for the last nine consecutive months.
Some ways we have made this possible is through extra anesthesia days at the Liberty and Burnet campuses. There is an extra anesthesiologist staffed for general anesthesia cases during certain days of the week to help increase our capacity. While this has helped, in February, an MRI scanner at Burnet Campus was scheduled to be replaced! This scanner downtime has been mitigated by using the GL2 (Emergency Room) and T1 (MRI Research Center) scanners at Burnet Campus. We use these scanners Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for outpatient and fetal scans. These changes allowed us to move the anesthesia patient schedule to another scanner in our department to maintain our capacity, even though we are one scanner down.
Another intervention to improve access was to allow general anesthesia patients to schedule appointments at Burnet Campus MRI on Saturdays. We also opened Green Township Outpatient MRI’s schedule on Wednesdays for outpatients. Additionally, we have worked hard on the scheduling process and questions we ask to ensure that patients are scheduled correctly, at the correct site, scanner, and time of day.
With all these changes being made within the Radiology department, we never want that to affect patient care! Our Radiology administration works hard to adjust scheduling to allow the departments to run smoothly and get everyone into an appointment in a timely manner.
Erin McNamara is an MRI Technologist at Cincinnati Children's Burnet Campus. She’s also certified in nuclear medicine! Erin loves the pace of radiology here at Cincinnati Children’s, and how their job is always advancing and changing! 2023 she’s coming up on her two years at the hospital. It has been her dream job since middle school to work here, and it has not disappointed her. She likes adventuring around the tri-state area in her free time, watching sports, skiing, and hanging out with her cats and boyfriend.
Glenn Miñano is a media specialist in the Department of Radiology, providing graphic design, photography, printing, video services, and administration of the department’s online properties. His works have been published in several medical articles, such as the American Journal of Radiology and the American Institute of Ultrasound. He has been providing these services to the Radiology Department since 1996.
Meredith Towbin is a freelance copy editor and writer. She has copyedited the Department of Radiology’s blog since it launched. She also works as a copy editor for the home improvement website BobVila.com. Her writing has been featured on HuffPost as well as other writing sites.
