Effects of Interpersonal Skills Training on MRI Operations in a Saturated Market: A Randomized Trial.

PURPOSE: The aim of this study was to assess the effects of team training on operational efficiency during outpatient MRI. METHODS: In this institutional review board-approved, HIPAA-compliant study, six MRI outpatient sites of a midwestern hospital system were randomized to serve as controls or have their teams trained in advanced communication skills. The fourth quarter of fiscal year 2015 was the trial baseline. The trial ended in the third quarter (Q3) of fiscal year 2016 (FY16). Equipment utilization (completed scans/available slots), hourly scan rates (total orders completed per machine per hour of operation), and no-show rates stratified by time were analyzed using the Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel method, with individual comparisons performed with Bonferroni correction. RESULTS: The study encompassed 27,425 MRI examinations. Overall volume peaked at baseline and then declined over the following quarters. Compared with baseline, untrained sites experienced significant drops in equipment utilization (P < .01 for the first quarter of FY16 and P < .0001 for the second quarter of FY16 and Q3 FY16), decreasing from 77% to 65% over the study period, corresponding to a decrease from 1.15 to 0.97 in hourly scan rates. For trained sites, these metrics showed no significant change, with maintenance of hourly scan rates of 1.23 and 1.27 and equipment utilization rates of 83% and 85% between baseline and Q3 FY16. No-show rates remained stable at trained sites but increased at untrained sites in the last two quarters (P < .05). Nationally benchmarked patient satisfaction percentile ranking gradually increased at trained sites from 56th at baseline to 70th and successively decreased at untrained sites from 66th to 44th. CONCLUSIONS: MRI outpatient facilities trained in advanced communication techniques may have more favorable operational efficiency than untrained sites in a saturated market.

Understanding patient satisfaction ratings for radiology services.

OBJECTIVE: Under the Hospital Value-Based Purchasing Program of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, patient satisfaction accounts for 30% of the measures of and payments for quality of care. Understanding what drives patient satisfaction data and how the data are obtained, converted into scores, and formulated into rankings is increasingly critical for imaging departments. The objectives of this article are to describe the potential impact of patient satisfaction ratings on institutions and individuals, explain how patient satisfaction is rated and ranked, identify drivers that affect the ratings and rankings, and probe the resulting challenges unique to radiology departments. CONCLUSION: Research results indicate that training providers to make simple modifications in their language and behavior during patient care can significantly impact patient satisfaction, which, in turn, can impact both quality-of-care ratings and the bottom line of hospitals. Training providers is a simple and cost-effective way to potentiate the clinical expression of compassion into improvement of patient satisfaction and financial reward, a national trend that no one in the game can afford to ignore.