A Study on Medical Imaging Equipment Productivity and Utilization

The importance of efficient utilization of expensive imaging equipment has been brought to full public attention by the current health care debates. In particular, the use of imaging equipments such as Computed Tomography (CT), Mammography (MG) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is known to contribute to the rising cost with health care. Though medical practices and research attempt to address this issue through measuring and improving imaging equipment productivity, the analysis has mainly focused on enterprise (hospital, clinical) level instead of operational (examination) level. This is due to the lack of technical data available from medical imaging. We have recently developed and implemented an enterprise wide imaging dose tracking system for Mayo Clinic which enables a comprehensive study on imaging equipment utilization. In this research, we first propose three standardized productivity metrics to study the imaging equipment productivity. Design of experiment is then conducted to identify significant factors affecting equipment productivity and utilization. The insights can be gained for medical administrators to better allocate resource and schedule resource utilization that in turn may reduce health care expenses.