Targeted Lung Health Check Programme: External Quality Assurance of Radiologists

Descriptions

The TLHC programme are looking to procure an external QA platform for radiologists.The external quality assurance of radiologists who report on the TLHC programme forms part of the quality assurance standards published for the programme (the TLHC programme has been signed off and is operational).Once developed, all radiologists who report on the TLHC programme will have to undertake an annual external quality assurance (EQA) test to read low dose CT scans.This will involve radiologists reviewing a set number of CT scans with the results used to benchmark reporting of radiologists with peers.This process will establish a feedback loop, to measure the ongoing quality of radiologists reporting practices.The objectives of having an EQA are to:• Ensure reporting of low dose CT scans is evaluated to flag outliers who have high rates of recalls and high rates of interval cancers being detected.• Ensure radiologists that are outliers receive training and ongoing support overseen by the Responsible Radiologist and Clinical Director of Programme.•To help achieve the TLHC programme’s primary objective of diagnosing people who have lung cancer at an earlier stage and identifying those who do not have the disease.•To develop radiologists’ ability to detect early lung cancer without incurring unnecessary investigation of clinically unimportant findings in asymptomatic participants.•To provide a professional development platform for radiologists to learn from their reporting practices and benchmark themselves against their peers.•Similar EQA platforms are already in place for other image-based screening programmes, such as breast and colon cancer.Lung cancer is a key focus for the national cancer programme, as Lung has a significant low proportion of diagnoses at stage 1 or 2.There are four core deliverables required:•Overall responsibility for the system - obtaining CT scans for readers to review and develop marking/benchmarking criteria•Provide helpline service to users on an adhoc basis and escalate concerns as necessary•Provide data reports to users on their results, benchmarked against peers, and indicate areas for development•Provide data reports and presentations to NHSE