A RISE in Emergency Department admissions drove a 400% increase in head scans last year – which impacted the hospital’s capacity to carry out planned CT scans.
According to a report presented at the most recent meeting of the Health Advisory Board, the CT scanner at the General Hospital is often available but “staffing constraints” limit the amount of scans that can be carried out.
It also raised concerns about “annual leave coverage gaps”, noting that “service capacity drops significantly during periods of annual leave”.
The report noted that the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence “frequently changes its guidelines, such as adjusting scan frequencies for cancer follow-up or the threshold for trauma imaging, which impacts on capacity with no additional resource”.
It comes just over a year after a Royal College of Physicians review of radiology found that “aggression” and “gatekeeping” had destroyed diagnosis opportunities.
As a result, 20 women had to be recalled for a breast cancer screening last year over fears of a possible misdiagnosis by a radiologist, while a further 14 were told that their diagnosis was initially missed – in some cases delaying their treatment for up to a year.
At the time, Health Minister Tom Binet admitted there were “other issues in radiology under scrutiny at the moment”.
One year on, the recent report presented to the Health Advisory Board revealed that MRI is at “full capacity on both scanners and workforce”.
There are “limited options for expansion” of MRI scans without further funding, it added.
And a shortage of in-house radiology staff has created a “greater reliance” on teleradiology, which sees the reading of scans outsourced to external specialists.
This service cost Jersey’s Health Department £90,000 last year – a figure which is expected to rise by 55% to £130,000 this year.
Teleradiology also results in slower service delivery than internal reporting, according to the report.
