Royal Melbourne Hospital cuts duty radiologist phone interruptions by 55% with asynchronous chat

Phone calls to the duty radiologist at Royal Melbourne Hospital dropped from a median of 181 to 82 per day (55% reduction) after implementing an EMR-integrated chat platform and referrer education, while study protocolling throughput remained unchanged.

• The intervention used Epic Secure Chat integrated with the EMR and targeted education on communication expectations.
• Referrer education stressed that routine imaging requests with adequate clinical info are protocoled without additional contact.
• Median chat time-to-read was 8 minutes and time-to-reply was 14 minutes, with protocoled study volume unchanged.

Automated summary

RadPigeon summaries are original and for information only. They are not clinical advice.