Effects of an MRI Try Without program on patient access.

Area of Science:

• Pediatric Radiology
• Medical Imaging Techniques
• Patient Care Management

Background:

• Pediatric patients often require sedation for MRI scans to achieve diagnostic image quality.
• Long wait times for sedated MRI scans are common due to high patient volumes and limited sedation resources.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the effectiveness of an MRI Try Without sedation program.
• To determine if this program can decrease MRI wait times while maintaining diagnostic image quality.

Main Methods:

• Retrospective chart review of 134 pediatric patients from April 2014 to June 2015.
• Inclusion of child life specialist interventions and recording of access time (order to completion).
• Evaluation of MRI image quality by a pediatric neuroradiologist.

Main Results:

• The MRI Try Without program averaged 15.4 days from order to completion.
• This contrasts with an average of 46.2 days for the third available sedation/anesthesia appointment.
• 87.3% of scans achieved "good" or "very good" image quality, with only 3.8% requiring re-examination.

Conclusions:

• An MRI Try Without sedation program, incorporating child life specialist interventions, effectively reduces MRI wait times for pediatric patients.
• Diagnostic-quality MRI images can be achieved without sedation in a significant majority of pediatric cases.
• This program improves access to MRI services for children by optimizing resource utilization.