'Patient risk' over result failures

12 April 2012

A failure to provide proper test results could be putting patients at risk, a report said.

The Healthcare Commission found that almost 10% of scan results were never formally reported to doctors by X-ray departments.

Doctors may have been told the results informally, not at all, or there could be an agreement that an X-ray is "okay" if no written result is offered. Some doctors may also be looking at scans and coming to their own conclusions.

As a result, the Commission noted, injuries or serious conditions could be missed.

The study also found that two-thirds of doctors still have to wait too long for the results of tests.

While waits for tests like X-rays have fallen, by 33% in some cases, there was a need to speed up the processing of results, it said.

There were "major differences" across the country, with one in four trusts taking longer than 10 days to report results to outpatient clinics.

Half of doctors questioned by the Commission said such waits impacted on decisions made about patient care.

The report, An Improving Picture? Imaging Services in Acute and Specialist Trusts, covers services in England for the year 2005/06. Experts used data from all 196 imaging departments in England and also surveyed 5,500 doctors and nurses.

Imaging departments carry out 33 million examinations every year, including X-rays, CT scans, MRI scans and ultrasound scans.

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