Peer review in diagnostic radiology: current state and a vision for the future

Over the past decade, the level of interest in improving the quality of healthcare in the United States has increased. New requirements established by regulatory organizations require the ongoing practice-based evaluation of physician performance. Peer review, a key process in physician performance evaluation, is geared primarily toward measuring diagnostic accuracy. Accuracy may be measured in terms of interpretive agreement or disagreement during a blinded double reading or in workstation-integrated evaluations. Each method of assessing diagnostic accuracy has strengths and weaknesses that should be carefully considered before it is implemented in a particular departmental or institutional setting.