The radiologist’s conundrum: benefits and costs of increasing CT capacity and utilization–a commentary

Excerpt

This paper is a timely reminder that, whatever the differences in health-care systems, the problems faced by Radiology across the world are often very similar. The rise in the clinical use of computed tomography (CT) is incontrovertible: the flexibility of modern CT systems offers little resistance to the demand for intensive examinations and high productivity, and there has been an extraordinary expansion in the number of clinical applications to which the technique can now be applied. Many of these have been major advances in investigative medicine, fully justified by the contribution they make to patient care. In other areas, however, there is doubt, and, as the authors point out, the expansion of the technique may at times be driven not by justifiable clinical need, but by pressure to perform financially or by demand from referrers. Today no institution can afford to ignore the tension between resource and demand that results from the technical capacity and application of CT, and there is general perception that a need exists for some constraint in utilisation. …