Radiology Coding Alert

Critical safety areas include radiation dose, equipment performance, and technologist qualifications. 

Your radiology practice has an additional year to implement The Joint Commission’s (JC) revised safety requirements for facilities providing diagnostic imaging services, now that the July 1, 2014 deadline has been postponed to 2015. This has raised concerns amongst many coders. Learn why this delay was announced and how it affects your radiology practice.  

Refresher: The changes relate to either quality and safety issues that were needed to more fully address the evolution of health care delivery practices, or expanding upon the current JC requirements, such as those related to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), according to press releases from The Joint Commission The revisions incorporate recommendations from diagnostic imaging experts, professional associations, and accredited organizations regarding areas that affect the safe delivery of diagnostic imaging services.

The rationale:  “With these updates, The Joint Commission’s goal is to ensure that our imaging standards remain up-to-date and sufficiently address quality and safety,” said Margaret VanAmringe, MHS, executive vice president of public policy and government relations for The Joint Commission. “These rigorous imaging standards address overall patient safety, oversight of imaging services, staff competency, radiation safety procedures, equipment maintenance and quality control. This system evaluation seeks to ensure that organizations providing imaging services have the requisite infrastructure and safety culture to minimize radiation exposure to patients and staff and provide safe and effective care.”

Current status: The JC analyzed the feedback from key stakeholders and concluded that some issues related to quality, safety and evolution of health care delivery practices require further evaluation and research; the implementation has been delayed for a year. “The Joint Commission received concerns that there was the need for further research to ensure that the new standards best promote the improvement of quality and safety,” says Christy Hembree, CPC, Team Leader, Summit Radiology Services, Cartersville, GA. 

No Partial Rollout In 2014

The revised standards will now be released en bloc in 2015, rather than as a partial roll out in 2014 and 2015. However, experts predict that most of the 2014 proposed requirements would be implemented verbatim. 

Where to look: The final version will be posted on the JC website for six months until the identified implementation date.

What’s covered: The first phase focuses on CT, nuclear medicine, PET and MRI. According to Van Amringe, the second phase will focus on minimum qualifications for clinicians to carry out the imaging procedures, fluoroscopy, and cone beam CT used in dental practices and maxillofacial surgery facilities.

Critical safety areas being addressed include radiation dosage documentation, equipment performance evaluation, entry level qualifications of technologist performing CT.