Improving efficiency management of radiopharmaceutical materials at a nuclear medicine department

The cost of radiopharmaceutical materials is highly expensive compared with other resources employed in nuclear medicine department. Hence, inefficient utilization of these costly materials will lead to waste and more financial burden on the healthcare system, increasing the patient waiting list for important diagnostic procedures, especially in those with need urgent care on time. The available data for the previous 12 months about positron emission tomography / computed tomography (PET/CT) unit at nuclear medicine departments showed that over 16% of radiopharmaceutical materials were not utilized and being wasted due to increased number of cancelled or rescheduled oncology patients. The overall financial cost for the underutilized radiopharmaceutical materials due to cancelled and rescheduled procedures for 142 patient were about 39,760 US dollar. Most of these are the oncology patients with diabetes arriving at the nuclear medicine department with high blood glucose level and so are not fit for the procedure. This project aims to improve the oncology diabetic patients preparation for PET/CT procedure to avoid wasting the radiopharmaceutical materials. After implementing the PDSA cycles on 14 oncology patients we found that the quantity of not utilized radiopharmaceuticals were significantly reduced. On the other hand, majority of oncology diabetic patients became more aware about the importance of following the required preparation instruction.