What is the challenge your project is going to address and how does it connect to the theme of 'How can improvement be used to reduce delays accessing health and care services'?

Cardiac MRI is a unique powerful test to assess forms and function of the heart of adult and children without using radiation and nowadays it is an essential part in managing many heart diseases. The local Cardiac MRI service ceased after the departure of an experienced radiologist before the pandemic. In addition, our MRI software to read and analyse MRI images is an old version and requires to be updated.

Due to a lack of reporting expertise and staff resources as well as the outdated cardiac MR software package, all Cardiac MRI reporting is currently outsourced to private companies which usually take up to 14 days to report. It causes significant delays, variable diagnostic quality, and suboptimal feedbacks from our cardiology colleagues. This undesirable situation causes all hospital inpatients and outpatients who need Cardiac MRI to have potential delays in both diagnosis and access to proper treatment and management.

What does your project aim to achieve?

We serve a large population covering a widespread area across the Highlands.  Our aim is to re-start and to improve the in-house Cardiac MRI reporting service by training up the local radiologists, physicist and radiographers using the most updated version of the cardiac MR software. We hope to streamline the service, shorten reporting time to around 5 days and to improve the patient’s experience. This positive change leads to reduce diagnosing time to start proper medical treatment by restructuring service delivery mode and team building.

How will the project be delivered?

Our steering group includes Radiologists, MR Radiographer, Medical Physicist with input from Cardiologists. By procuring an additional licence and upgrading the software, funding training, upgrading audio-visual and electronic equipment for education and teaching, & designing patient’s pamphlets and posters for communication, we are aiming to shorten the reporting time, redesign the service and to rebuild our cardiac MRI team in the new normal post-pandemic era.

How is your project going to share learning?

SYMPTOM: One of the symptoms in our current system is long waiting times for patients which cause loss of health and human life.

PROBLEM: Problems deep in the heart. Factors are the lack of staff resources, equipment, and support, as well as poor morale.

CURE:  Right diagnosis matters. Proper treatment depends on the timely right diagnosis. By collaboration of expertise, we are aiming at redesigning the Cardiac MR service in the Radiology department by getting the state-of-art software and streamlining the mode of service delivery.

Regional healthcare systems can survive and thrive in the paradigm shift with a sparkle of inspiration.