(Sunday, 7/12/2020) [Eastern Time (GMT-4)]
Room: AAPM ePoster Library
Purpose: To determine the percentage of diagnostic imaging equipment that fails the annual Medical Physicist performance evaluation and its potential impact on the development of Smart Regulations and Practice.
Methods: review of Medical Physicist Annual survey report results from 2017 through 2019 for Computed Tomography (CT), Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), Mammography and Fluoroscopic units was performed. The total number of units evaluated and the percentage of units that failed a regulatory or accreditation requirement was determined. In addition, an evaluation of the severity of the failure (i.e., could the unit be used clinically or must it be taken out of use until service is performed)was conducted.
Results: of the survey results showed for CT: (2017, 6.9% of 72 units failed, 2018 1.4% of 73 failed and for 2019, 0 units failed out of 75, for MRI: 2017, 0 units failed out of 53 units, 2018, 0 out of 54 and 2019, 0 units out of 53 failed, for Mammography: 2017, 12.7% failed out of 102 units, 2018, 2.9% failed out of 104 and 2019, 9.6% failed out of 125 units and for Fluoroscopes: 2017, 5.4% of 296 units failed, 2018, 12.2% of 294 and 2019, 13.1% of 320 units failed. The vast majority of the failures did not require the units to be removed from clinical use prior to service.
Conclusion: Medical Physics evaluations of diagnostic imaging equipment has been required by regulatory and accreditation bodies for many years. As shown by this review, it could be argued for this facility and especially for the CT and MRI units that annual evaluations do not provide much value. Therefore, from the perspective of MEDPHYS 3.0,is it time to re-evaluate the prescriptive regulatory and accreditation requirement for annual evaluations and move towards a data driven practice?
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