Referral Guidelines in Radiology: Point of Care Advice

Background:

Referral guidelines are becoming more and more appreciated in health management primarily to optimize resource utilization. But in the case of medical imaging, the wise selection of the most appropriate study is also important from the patient’s safety perspective. However, the problem is not limited to the availability of guidelines. Even when they are already developed and published, their practical use should be feasible to improve health care. IT tools are important to bring the guidelines to the point of care and tailor the decision to the patient's problem.

Objectives:

By listening to this lecture, the audience is expected to:

1. Explain available imaging referral guidelines.

2. Describe the features of IT-based decision support tools.

3. List the process of using BARTAR application as a national imaging referral guideline platform.

Outline:

The most comprehensive repository of imaging referral guidelines is the appropriateness criteria developed by the American College of Radiology. There are other national or multinational collections of guidelines but no one is practical. There are IT tools to help practitioners select the best imaging procedure according to the guidelines and considering patient’s problems, including ACR Select and iGuide.

Every national health system requires an adapted version of the guidelines considering available modalities and the health system. By developing an Iranian collection of imaging referral guidelines, a Persian mobile application is designed to interactively advise medical practitioners by answering questions related to the clinical problem of the case and considering available imaging services in the institution or the region of practice, leading to a list of potential choices in order of appropriateness.