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bodert · Joined: 07 May 2006 Posts: 2

I'm an RT and a PA student trying to justify my idea of a thesis teaching CT/x-sectional anatomy to 1st yr pa students, and I thought showing some utilization #'s (ie. % of inpatients scanned)would be a good start, but can't find any. Direction and/or help is greatly appreciated. Thanks! -J

CTDave · Posted: Sun May 21, 2006 10:23 pm Post subject: ct utilization #'s?

The number of computed tomography procedures grew 10 percent from 2002 to 2003, according to a new census of CT sites in the United States. The fastest area of growth was among specialty procedures, such as vascular and cardiac CT procedures.

An estimated 50.1 million CT procedures were performed at more than 7,350 facilities in 2003, up from 45.4 million in 2002, according to IMV Medical Information Division of Des Plaines, Ill. The average number of procedures performed per CT system in 2003 was 5,300 per year, and the typical site is open for scheduled procedures for 54 hours a week, which translates to about two scheduled patients per hour.

“CT has become the workhorse in diagnostic imaging, with its broad range of clinical capabilities,” said Lorna Young, senior director, Market Research at IMV.

Common CT examinations such as pelvic and abdominal, brain, head and neck, chest and spine studies accounted for 85 percent of CT procedures. While specialty procedures, such as vascular and cardiac CT procedures, made up only 5 percent of the total, they grew 37 percent to 2.6 million procedures in 2003.

The IMV census found that multislice CTs have become the CT of choice. Along with their clinical breadth, multislice CT systems also are highly productive due to the scan acquisition speed of the technology, according to the report. Fifty-one percent of all installed CTs had multislice detectors, 42 percent had single slice spiral detectors, 4 percent had traditional, nonspiral detectors and 3 percent had spiral detectors with an unspecified slice status.

CT sites are replacing their CTs every six to seven years, resulting in a healthy replacement market of at least 1,000 units per year.

Virtually all of the sites in the survey performed pelvic and abdominal and chest studies, and more than 90 percent performed brain, head and neck and spine procedures. Approximately one-half of the sites performed guided procedures, including biopsies, abscess drainage and interventional procedures, but these constituted only 3 percent of the 2003 CT procedures. Forty-four percent of the CT sites performed vascular CT studies, which account for 4 percent of procedures, and 19 percent performed cardiac studies, which account for 1 percent of procedures. Whole-body screening was performed by 10 percent of the CT sites and virtual CT colonography was performed by 8 percent of the sites.

The average volume of CT procedures per full-time staff in 2003 was 1,790 CT procedures per technologist and 1,360 CT procedures per total staff, which includes technologists, secretaries, administrators and nurses.

In 2003, 92 percent of all CT procedures were adult procedures and 8 percent were pediatric procedures. Almost two-thirds of all CT procedures were performed on an outpatient basis, and 37 percent were performed on inpatients.

With respect to contrast media, 59 percent of the CT sites had contrast media budgets less than $50,000, while 14 percent had budgets of $150,000 and higher. Overall, 93 percent of the sites indicated they use at least one power injector. Hospitals with 200 or more beds were slightly more likely to have power injectors than smaller hospitals and nonhospitals.

By Laurie Volkin and Richard S. Dargan, ASRT Contributing Writers

Hope this helps Very Happy

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