Peer Review in Diagnostic Radiology: Current State and a Vision for the Future

Abstract

Over the past decade, the level of interest in improving the quality of healthcare in the United States has increased. New requirements established by regulatory organizations require the ongoing practice-based evaluation of physician performance. Peer review, a key process in physician performance evaluation, is geared primarily toward measuring diagnostic accuracy. Accuracy may be measured in terms of interpretive agreement or disagreement during a blinded double reading or in workstation-integrated evaluations. Each method of assessing diagnostic accuracy has strengths and weaknesses that should be carefully considered before it is implemented in a particular departmental or institutional setting.

Using IT for Non-Hierarchical Performance Assessment: New Ways to Develop Professionals in Health Care

“…Through this tool, appraisal is performed by an individual with a similar background of competence and in a similar position. Peer review is used to evaluate the results of a work and it is the most commonly used method for assessing performance by physician's peers in order to identify opportunities for additional education, error reduction, and self-improvement [6]. An adequate PRP should be fair and unbiased, so participants choice and tools arrangement are critical.…”

“…An adequate PRP should be fair and unbiased, so participants choice and tools arrangement are critical. Assessors and assessed anonymity could improve results quality [6]. In fact, if an individual does not know the evaluation "subject", he/she has to inevitably focus on evaluation "object", so feedback is not affected by personal issues between the concerned individuals.…”

“…Several studies showed that one of the most recurring cause of both failure of 360-degree feedback and peer review systems is that they are very time-consuming [6,9]. IT offers a way to address this issue and, for this reason, the supply of new performance assessment software is currently booming.…”

“…Other health care organizations, instead, have designed in-house their software for evaluating performance rather than using commercial (out-of-the-box) packages [1]. With reference to evaluation techniques, these web-based systems allow to perform both 360-degree evaluation and peer review [1,6]. Although many health care organizations use web-based evaluation systems for assessing physicians' skills, behaviors and work outcomes, the health care literature has paid little attention on this topic.…”

Survey of Radiologist Attitudes and Perceptions Regarding the Incorporation of a Departmental Peer Review System

“…Peer review in radiology typically involves the assessment of diagnostic accuracy, on the basis of perception, interpretation, or communication skills [1]. Traditional peer review processes have focused on individual physicians who either self-critique or critique their colleagues' performance on an ad hoc, voluntary basis.…”