RSNA Radiology Reporting Initiative

The RSNA has established a Radiology Reporting Committee to identify and promote "best practices" in radiology reporting. The Committee, part of the Radiology Informatics Committee, includes radiologists and imaging informatics experts. The Reporting Committee is closely linked to RSNA's Quality Improvement Committee and RadLex® Steering Committee.

Stay Informed: Join the RSNA Reporting Forum

If you are interested in receiving periodic updates on the activities of the RSNA Reporting initiative, please join the RSNA Reporting Forum.

Background

• RSNA Reporting Committee Plan

• 2008 Health policy statement on structured reporting in cardiovascular imaging

• The radiology report of the future: A summary of the 2007 Intersociety Conference

• Structured reporting: Patient care enhancement or productivity nightmare?

• Towards best practices in radiology reporting, a committee position paper

• A randomized trial to evaluate an early structured reporting system and an accompanying editorial

Progress

• June 2008: RSNA convened a workshop to plan the future of radiology reporting. More than 50 radiologists, medical informatics specialists, and representatives of cardiology, oncology, and pathology participated. Consensus was reached on a global template for diagnostic radiology reports, including standardized radiology report headings.

• November 2008: In conjunction with the RSNA Quality Improvement Committee, developed a standardized template for documenting communication of critical test results.

• March 2009: Formed 13 subcommittees to create templates for specific clinical areas in collaboration with subspecialty professional organizations.

• May 2009: Conducted an industry forum for radiology reporting vendors, attended by 20 vendor representatives. Slide presentations from that meeting can be found here.

• December 2009: Planned availability of a small RSNA library of structured reporting templates, freely available for downloading and use.

Information for Reporting Template Developers

The information below is presented to aid radiologists and others who are developing reporting templates.

• Template Development Subcommittees

• Standard Radiology Report Headings -- These headings outline the major sections of a generic radiology report.

• Report template guidelines -- This page describes the "mark-up language" to be used to describe reporting templates.

• Example reporting template -- Lung nodule CT exam.

Technical Resources

• RSNA RadLex radiology vocabulary. Terms in reporting templates will be mapped to RadLex and other controlled vocabularies.

• Synoptic Reporting code site. We plan to adapt the RELAX-NG coding framework, developed by the College of American Pathologists, for use in radiology reporting.

• HL7 Clinical Document Architecture.

• Reporting template metadata. These data are used to index entries in the library of reporting templates.

References

We are constructing a bibliography of structured reporting in radiology.