An emergency department radiology audit procedure

An audit was done to ascertain the concordance of radiographic interpretation by the emergency physician and the radiologist. In 8,021 radiographic procedures during the two-month study, concordance of interpretation was found in 97.6%. The primary area of interpretation difficulty was chest radiographs. Specifically, there was limited agreement (10 of 45 films, 22%) regarding the reading of inflammatory processes. Despite this, 40 of the 45 patients (89%) whose chest radiographs were reviewed received proper therapy. The findings in five radiographs were deemed to be significant enough to possibly lead to changes in management.