Structured Head and Neck CT Angiography Reporting Reduces Resident Revision Rates

Purpose: This resident-driven quality improvement project was undertaken to assess the effectiveness of structured reporting to reduce revision rates for afterhours reports dictated by residents. Methods: The first part of the study assessed baseline revision rates for head and neck CT angiography (CTA) examinations dictated by residents during afterhours call. A structured report was subsequently created based on templates on the RSNA informatics reporting website and critical findings that should be assessed for on all CTA examinations. The template was made available to residents through the speech recognition software for all head and neck CTA examinations for a duration of 2 months. Report revision rates were then compared with and without use of the structured template. Results: The structured template was found to reduce revision rates by approximately 50% with 10/41 unstructured reports revised and 2/17 structured reports revised. Conclusions: We believe that structured reporting can help reduce reporting errors, particularly in term of typographical errors, train residents to evaluate complex examinations in a systematic fashion, and assist them in recalling critical findings on these examinations.