Cleveland – August 9, 2012 – Radisphere (www.radispheregroup.com), the largest and fastest-growing national radiology group in the United States, today launched the Radiology Quality Institute (RQI). The RQI is a collaborative research organization dedicated to the identification and promotion of radiology quality standards and process improvements in order to improve health care delivery.

The RQI has a focused research agenda to identify and implement technology and workflow innovations that deliver measurable improvements to radiology processes in areas that include interpretative accuracy, appropriate utilization, peer review, concurrence review, critical findings communication, consultations, turnaround time, and interventional radiology. 

With access to Radisphere’s extensive data and analytics obtained from working with 35 hospitals and more than 10,000 clinicians, the RQI is focused on the cooperative establishment of performance and process benchmarks that can help deliver measurable improvements and innovations to radiology services.

“The Radiology Quality Institute was founded on the same principles that led Radisphere to implement quality standards and processes that drive quality, encourage transparency, and increase accountability,” said Frank Seidelmann, D.O., Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer of Radisphere. “By making our data available for the study of process improvement, the RQI hopes to transform the way healthcare is delivered and measured for the benefit of the ultimate end user – the patient.”

The RQI also will administer quality improvement programs consistent with Radisphere’s “just culture” approach, sharing best practices that can increase accountability and performance measures.

“To date, there is no universally accepted set of standards that hospitals or health systems can use to accurately measure diagnostic radiology performance (outside of mammography), which makes it difficult to identify the performance of radiology services,” said Dr. Seidelmann. “By sharing performance benchmark data, the RQI will provide a collaborative, educational resource for organizations seeking to improve the delivery of radiology services.”

Health care quality research organizations and accredited academic institutions interested in becoming a research partner of the RQI to further radiology quality standards through the collaborative sharing of performance and process benchmarks should email rqi@radispheregroup.com. More information about the RQI is available at www.radiologyqualityinstitute.com.

About Radisphere

Headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, Radisphere (www.radispheregroup.com) is the largest and fastest-growing national radiology group in the United States. Radisphere has been setting the standard for quality in radiology since 2001. As the exclusive radiology provider for 35 hospitals in 11 states, Radisphere partners with its customers to measurably improve quality, increase medical staff satisfaction, reduce costs and drive growth. Its local radiologists are supported by the industry’s premier network of subspecialists and a proprietary, cloud-based technology platform. Radisphere’s standards-based approach guarantees faster, more accurate diagnoses, appropriate utilization, and the highest quality of patient care.

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