Success for Radiology

Elective recovery is a key focus for our Getting to Good programme, and this includes diagnostics.

Using innovative and flexible solutions, our Radiology Team has been able to significantly reduce the X-ray reporting backlog caused by pressures from COVID-19 as well as staffing challenges.

At its peak in August 2022, the waiting list for plain film X-ray was at 10,000 but by the end of 2022 the team had reduced this significantly.

As of the beginning of March 2023, there were only 28 reports on the waiting list.

The team was able to achieve this by:

• Investing in home reporting workstations so that colleagues could work more flexibly and maximise their time

• Leading, managing and receiving centre approval for Wait List Initiative (WLI) to undercut outsourcing companies and to invest in colleagues to extra reporting work

• Protecting as much time as possible for reporting radiographers

• Pulling back on the GP backlog to allow sufficient time to catch up on the reporting first, and then reinstate the WLI for the GP backlog

• Outsourcing a radiographer reporting company to support our in-house reporters

Graham Kelly, Consultant Radiographer, said: “As a team we have used creative solutions to help us meet the immense demand for diagnostic services during one of the most testing times for the NHS.

“Crucially, our patients are receiving much more timely reports now. The backlog reduction helps our internal referrers to manage patients more effectively and deliver high quality care.”

“Seeing thousands of reports waiting can put a lot of pressure on our reporting colleagues, so we had to work differently to be able to ease this and provide the right level of care to our patients. Our performance is now better than it was pre-COVID and better than the national recommendations for report turnaround times."

Graham Kelly, Consultant Radiographer