Systematic review of interventions aimed at improving the quality of referrals to radiology

Despite ubiquitous use of medical imaging in daily medical practice, the quality of referrals varies significantly across a variety of practice types and locations. This systematic review summarises studies in the literature that have employed interventions aimed at improving radiology referrals, excluding clinical decision support software. A systematic review of literature was conducted in PubMed, EMBASE, Scopus, and Cochrane. Two reviewers independently identified studies for inclusion. All studies that included interventions with any outcome measure were included. Any irrelevant studies, non-English studies or not retrievable studies were excluded. Studies were grouped into Education, Feedback, Rationing, Penalties, and Other. The outcomes of the studies were summarised and qualitatively analysed due to anticipated heterogeneity. Four thousand six hundred and forty-two studies were identified throughout PubMed, EMBASE, Scopus, and Cochrane. One hundred and eighty-seven duplicates were removed and 4436 abstracts were screened. Two hundred and forty were identified on the first phase of the screening with 167 then excluded for non-relevancy. Seventy-five full studies were included in the final analysis following the addition of 2 additional studies. Fifty-seven studies were grouped into Education, 10 into Feedback, 4 into Rationing, 8 into Penalties, 9 into Other and 11 containing multiple. Eighty-four percent of the studies reported an improvement in the quality of the referrals. Despite a variable rate of quality referrals, there are many interventions that radiology departments across the world can utilise to improve the referral process.