One of a radiologist's core PACS needs is a system that helps gather the studies he or she needs to dictate. Worklists do the organization for the radiologist.
A worklist is a collection of patients and their studies (grouped by patient by default). For radiologists, the worklist is analogous to a pile of film jackets. They use the worklist to know which studies they must interpret. For example, all new CT Head studies can go into one standard worklist. For the site's neuro radiologist, that CT Head worklist is displayed in his List area, and he can begin work on those studies.
When determining what worklists you need for the department, consider the following points.
Managing radiology work with standard worklists
By creating standard worklists, the PACS Administrator can divide the work departmentally. The configuration of the worklists in the List area should reflect the way in which the department wants to work. In general, worklists for radiologists are centered around:
Modality—You could create worklists solely dedicated to CR studies, for example.
Modality and body part—CTs of the head might be covered by a neuro radiology group.
Age—If paediatric cases are handled by separate staff, they will need their own worklists based on the patient's age.
Acquisition location—Work can be broken down by where the patient's study was performed. For example, for a radiologist assigned to cover the ER, all ER studies flow into one worklist to work from.
When creating worklists, ensure that you balance the needs of your department and site. Creating too many narrowly focused worklists results in a less-than useful tool.
Managing conferences, clinics, and rounds with scheduled worklists
In sites that hold conferences, clinics, or rounds, you can create scheduled worklists. Scheduled worklists occur on specific days, such as every Wednesday. Radiologists then use these scheduled worklists to prepare for conferences, clinics, or rounds.
Managing report approval with sign-off and proxy sign-off worklists
After a study is dictated, but not yet signed off and approved, it can be grouped in a sign-off worklist or a proxy sign-off worklist for the radiologist so that he or she can sign off studies in batches. (This type of worklist is only available when integrated with IMPAX Reporting.)
Managing personal lists of studies with personal worklists
At times radiologists need to keep lists of studies for a variety of needs such as active studies, research interesting cases, publications, and so on. Radiologists can use personal worklists to keep these studies grouped together.
It is also possible to share personal worklists with other users if the worklist is created at the role level. The primary reason to share a personal worklist is to create an on-call workflow worklist, allowing radiologists to drag studies to the worklist where they remain for consults until removed.
Communicating with clinicians with standard worklists
Clinicians need fewer, or no, worklists. If required, typically a clinician needs standard worklists based on:
Ordering physician—All patients in a clinician's care for which she ordered a diagnostic procedure. Be aware, however, that multiple spellings and data entry problems can impact this field's reliability (e.g. Dr. Joe Greene, Joe Greene, J.Greene).
Current patient location—For in-patients, searches depend on the ward the clinician is covering. Creating an ICU worklist would group all patients currently in the ICU.
Managing special workflows with standard worklists
Standard worklists can also handle special workflows for other members of the department:
Shared Worklists—with the introduction of Claim and Assign, worklists can be created to personalize tasks. By adding the Radiologist criteria to a worklists, studies that are claimed (or assigned) to a user automatically appears in their worklist.
Quality control studies (unverified or conflicts)—All studies that could not be verified against the demographic data in the RIS, or have conflicting DICOM information, can be captured in a single worklist. Then, the person assigned to fix these studies can quickly verify the studies in the worklist. (Consult Resolving study conflicts, Creating standard worklists for unverified studies, , and to Automatically fixing demographic information in a batch of studies.)
Split or Segment candidates—Studies that must be split or segmented into multiple studies to match orders from the RIS can be sent to a worklist.
Note:
This may require DICOM mappings to avoid studies being read before going through quality control.
Studies to print—If certain types of studies must be printed by support staff, these studies can go into a single worklist for batch printing. Or, to improve batch printing quality, each type of modality can go into a separate worklist. (Consult Creating worklists for exporting to CD and print jobs.)