The benefits of hospital-wide PACS networks: a survey of clinical users of radiology services

An independent evaluation of PACS has been carried out at Hammersmith Hospital. This paper describes one element: the use of a questionnaire instrument to assess radiology service users' views on the quality of the service being provided; major causes of dissatisfaction with the service; the extent to which images are unavailable; and the consequences of images unavailability. The objective was to investigate some of the key claims made for the PACS technology. The principal research design was a 'before and after' comparison at Hammersmith Hospital. A number of other, comparator, hospitals were included in this survey in order to allow inferences to be made about the any observed changes at Hammersmith. The questionnaire was distributed on three occasions before PACS was operational at Hammersmith and on one occasion afterwards. Across all data collection rounds and all sites, very high levels of satisfaction with image quality were reported. When asked about satisfaction with the written reporting service, a larger proportion of respondents across all sites and rounds indicated their discontent. Following the introduction of PACS, the proportion of respondents indicating that lost ward or outpatient images was a problem was significantly lower and the rate of re-examination was lower.