Trends in Diagnostic Imaging Workload and Utilization in a Teaching Hospital

Arimie C.O.D.

Department of Radiology

University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital, Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria. 

E-mail: codarimie@yahoo.com

ABSTRACT

Diagnostic imaging is an invaluable tool of diagnosis in medicine. Despite its value, diagnostic imaging equipments are expensive and difficult to maintain. To that extent, there is increasing concern among health policy planners that the growth in utilization of high-technology procedures, such as diagnostic imaging procedures, is a major factor responsible for the rapid growth in health care costs. Hence, it was the purpose of this study to determine the trends in workload and utilization rates of diagnostic imaging in the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital (UPTH), Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria between January 2010 and December 2012. Data comprising records of attendance of patients to the hospital clinics, the number of diagnostic imaging procedures, and workload measured in Relative Value Units (RVU) for the respective imaging modalities for the years 2010, 2011 and 2012 were analyzed. The results show that Conventional radiography is the most widely used imaging modality constituting over 50% of the total diagnostic imaging in the three year period. Ultrasound Scanning (USS) is the second most used modality (over 40%) followed by CT (over 2%), MRI (over 1%) and Mammography (less than 1%). In 2010 the overall diagnostic imaging utilization rate was 908.6 (@ 909) examinations per 10,000 patients. In 2012 the rate was 732.6 (@ 733), representing a 19.4% decrease over 3 years. It was concluded that some of the imaging modalities were not utilized optimally and did not justify government spending on them particularly, MRI, and Mammography although, it was established that equipment breakdowns contributed significantly to this trend.