Development and evaluation of a quality assurance programme for a radiology department.

Design and Implementation of a Quality Assurance Programme for a Radiology Department (RAD-QAP). Abstract— This thesis describes the development, implementation and evaluation of a quality assurance programme for a radiology department. This research project reviewed relevant standards, legislation as well as recent high-profile enquiries into serious incidents in radiology and compared existing health care quality performance measurement systems, exploring their relevance. A method to select a set of appropriate key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure and improve the quality of the service where it most needed has been derived (see section 5.1.5) quality assurance scorecard for radiology (QASC) is the chosen data collection tool and provides a central point for data collection and quality improvement (QI) tracking. This measures the aspects of radiology that enable and support a high-quality radiology service. The set of selected KPIs were mapped to health standards, presenting scorecards specifically for a radiology department initially, and then scorecards for the next level of management were developed. RAD-QAP presents a structure with seven components to measure, within a predefined framework, process outcomes against set targets by utilising a set of specific key performance indicators. Following an action research methodology, RAD-QAP was implemented and evaluated in a live clinical environment to assess effectiveness for measuring quality to assure continuous quality improvement in radiology. The quality assurance programme commenced at a baseline, followed by quality improvement initiatives for non-compliant KPIs. A justification system for the different levels of quality achieved i.e. level 1 = Emerging Quality, Level 2 = Continuous Quality, level 3 = Sustained Quality and the achievement of Excellence at level 4 is included as part of RAD-QAP. This system was adapted from the QA Tool developed by the HSE. The tool is mapped to themes of the national health care standards [247]. An escalation Model for non-performance is also part of the programmed. Keywords— hospital quality plan; clinical audit; clinical data quality; data quality; quality processes; software systems, radiology key performance indicators, health care quality measurement systems, radiology quality metrics, radiology software standards, clinical software systems and data.