Adding value to daily chest X-rays in the ICU through education, restricted daily orders and indication-based prompting

BACKGROUND: Chest X-rays (CXRs) are traditionally obtained daily in all patients on invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV) in the intensive care unit (ICU). We sought to reduce overutilisation of CXRs obtained in the ICU, using a multifaceted intervention to eliminate automated daily studies. METHODS: We first educated ICU staff about the low diagnostic yield of automated daily CXRs, then removed the ‘daily’ option from the electronic health records-based ordering system, and added a query (CXR indicated or not indicated) to the ICU daily rounding checklist to prompt a CXR order when clinically warranted. We built a report from billing codes, focusing on all CXRs obtained on IMV census days in the medical (MICU) and surgical (SICU) ICUs, excluding the day of admission and days that a procedure warranting CXR was performed. This generated the number of CXRs obtained every 1000 ‘included’ ventilator days (IVDs), the latter defined as not having an ‘absolute’ clinical indication for CXR. RESULTS: The average monthly number of CXRs on an IVD decreased from 919±90 (95% CI 877 to 963) to 330±87 (95% CI 295 to 354) per 1000 IVDs in the MICU, and from 995±69 (95% CI 947 to 1055) to 649±133 (95% CI 593 to 697) in the SICU. This yielded an estimated 1830 to 2066 CXRs avoided over 2 years and an estimated annual savings of $191 600 to $224 200. There was no increase in reported adverse events. CONCLUSION: ICUs can safely transition to a higher value strategy of indication-based chest imaging by educating staff, eliminating the ‘daily’ order option and adding a simplified prompt to avoid missing clinically indicated CXRs.