Designed by Kelly Emrick, DHSc, PhD, MBA
How Do I Use the MRI Workflow Dashboard? Use the MRI Workflow Improvement Dashboard as a living operating system for workflow change rather than a one-time assessment. Start by selecting a workflow stage that matches your current constraint. For example, if access is your problem, begin with Scheduling and Authorization; if throughput is the problem, focus on Technologist Preparation and Image Acquisition; and if turnaround is the problem, concentrate on Image Transfer, Interpretation, and Report Distribution. For the selected stage, add or refine sub-improvement actions, then assign a single accountable owner, a due date, and at least one KPI that demonstrates the action worked. In practice, keep KPIs simple and stage-specific: order defect rate for Order Entry, authorization cycle time and denial rate for Insurance Authorization, on-time start and no-show rate for Scheduling, late implant discovery for Screening, transport wait minutes for Transport, protocol change rate for Protocol Selection, turnover minutes for Technologist Preparation, table time and repeat sequences for Acquisition, scan-to-PACS minutes for Transfer, scan-to-report turnaround for Interpretation, critical-result acknowledgement time for Distribution, and denial or coding error rate for Billing and QA. As you update baseline, current, and target values, the dashboard converts “opinions” into a measurable improvement narrative by showing progress over time, stage health, and what remains stuck in backlog, planned, or in progress. The data does not “predict clinical findings.” It predicts operational behavior and performance risk by revealing where the system will fail next if you do nothing: high protocol change rates forecast rework and longer table time, rising no-show risk and poor schedule fit forecast underutilization and overtime, weak screening compliance forecasts day-of cancellations and safety near-misses, long transport waits forecast scanner idle time, increasing repeat sequences forecast capacity loss, and slow critical-result acknowledgement forecasts downstream safety exposure. In other words, the dashboard helps you anticipate bottlenecks and reliability failures by linking each stage’s leading indicators to lagging outcomes like access days, throughput, turnaround time, staff strain, and denial burden, so you can intervene earlier, choose the highest-yield actions, and track whether the intervention actually moved the metric rather than just feeling like progress.