Time to CT scan for major trauma patients in our institution was over the national standard of 1 hour.  We compared time to CT from arrival to the emergency department (ED) before and after the introduction of a direct to scan pathway (intervention) which bypassed the requirement of prior discussion and approval by the duty radiologist. 

Patients were identified with initial data collection prospectively and more data collected and analysed retrospectively for both sets of patients. Data collected from electronic patient records, PACS, and Radiology Information System (RIS). Data collected included patient arrival time to ED, time to CT scan, time to report, and CT scan findings. Only cases where a trauma call was put out leading to trauma team activation were included. This also alerted the CT radiographers as part of the trauma team activation. 

The direct to scan pathway was led by the CT radiographers with pre-set acceptance criteria and protocols agreed by the radiology and emergency departments.

In addition, we assessed time to CT report for the included scans against national standards. This comprised time to primary report (standard 5 minutes), time to secondary/complete report (standard 1 hour), and time to consultant verified report (standard 24 hours).