The blog
Radiology operations, before the read.
What it takes to get a study ready to read, out on time, and paid for on the first submission. Written for the people who run imaging, not the ones reading it.
Between the order and the signed report sits a long stretch of work that almost nobody writes about: scheduling, protocoling, chasing priors out of an outside PACS, authorization, and deciding what a worklist surfaces first. Clinical literature skips past it. Vendor material tends to jump straight to interpretation. That middle stretch is what we cover here, including the handoffs and unowned steps that decide whether a study is usable at all by the time a radiologist opens it.
- Study readiness·Oct 12, 2026·6 min read
Blocked or Read-Ready: A Shift Checklist
On a Pending shift, every study you open needs a result someone else can use: blocked, a read-ready proposal, or still unknown.
- Turnaround time·Sep 28, 2026·6 min read
What to Search When a Study Stalls in Pending
A finished exam can sit in Pending while someone tracks down a missing document or clears a hold. Those delays need different answers from reader productivity advice.
- Study readiness·Sep 21, 2026·7 min read
How to Staff Pending QC Across Multiple Sites
Adding an imaging site changes the QC workload as well as the exam count. Build coverage around when studies arrive, how much follow-up they need, and who can resolve each site's exceptions.
- Study readiness·Sep 14, 2026·7 min read
Tags, Reasons, and Tasks in Pending QC
Pending workflows often rely on familiar objects: tags, reason-for-exam fields, and owned tasks. Used together, they help PACS admins separate studies that are ready from studies that still need work.
- Study readiness·Sep 7, 2026·7 min read
HL7 vs Non-HL7 in Outpatient Imaging QC
Sites use different sources to show that a Pending study is ready. Some rely on structured order feeds; others use approved documents and notes. QC policy has to reflect the site's workflow.
- Study readiness·Aug 31, 2026·7 min read
Read-Only Before Writeback for Radiology Ops
Start by seeing whether a Pending QC agent makes sound recommendations on cases your team already knows. Keep source writes off until the evidence supports a narrowly controlled next step.
- Study readiness·Aug 24, 2026·7 min read
Cost of Incomplete Studies Reaching the Reader
When a study leaves Pending unfinished, the damage doesn't show up as one line item. It shows up as callbacks, rework, and reading time spent on the record instead of the images.
- Study readiness·Aug 17, 2026·7 min read
Pending QC vs Worklist Smart Routing
Routing sorts a queue of studies. Pending QC decides whether a study belongs in that queue. The worklist object routing runs on has no state that means "the record is not ready."
- Study readiness·Aug 12, 2026·7 min read
Why PACS Admins Own the Last Mile Before Reading
The checks that decide whether a study can be read happen in tags, statuses, and source corrections. That is PACS admin territory, which is why a radiologist champion rarely moves the Pending queue.
- Prior authorization·Jul 16, 2026·7 min read
5 Front-End Failures Behind Imaging Denials
Most imaging denials aren't clinical calls — they're operational breakdowns that happen before the study is ever read. Here are the five most common ones, and how to catch each before it turns into a rejected claim.
- Prior authorization·Jul 15, 2026·7 min read
What Causes Imaging Prior Authorization Denials
An authorization is a promise about one specific study, on one specific date, at one specific place. Imaging orders rarely hold that still — and the drift between the two is what most denials are made of.
- Study readiness·Jul 2, 2026·7 min read
What Makes a Study Read-Ready in Pending
Images in the archive are only half the handoff. In Pending, read-ready means the study record has passed the operational checks your site requires before a reader opens it.
- Turnaround time·Jun 18, 2026·7 min read
Reduce Radiology Turnaround Time Without More Hires
The clock on a study starts long before a radiologist opens it. Most of the time a report spends "in progress" is spent waiting — on priors, on orders, on queue position. None of that is fixed by a new hire.
What we write about
Three topics, and they bleed into one another. A prior that never got retrieved fails a readiness check on Monday, turns into a late report on Tuesday, and can come back as a denial six weeks later. The grouping below is mostly a filing convenience.
Study readiness
Most studies that stall were never ready to begin with: a prior sitting in an outside PACS, an order with no indication on it, a protocol chosen for a different question than the one being asked, the same patient carrying two identities across RIS and PACS. These posts put a working definition around "read-ready" and look at how teams verify it without building a queue in front of the queue.
- Blocked or Read-Ready: A Shift Checklist
- How to Staff Pending QC Across Multiple Sites
- Tags, Reasons, and Tasks in Pending QC
- HL7 vs Non-HL7 in Outpatient Imaging QC
- Read-Only Before Writeback for Radiology Ops
- Cost of Incomplete Studies Reaching the Reader
- Pending QC vs Worklist Smart Routing
- Why PACS Admins Own the Last Mile Before Reading
- What Makes a Study Read-Ready in Pending
Turnaround time
Adding readers is the usual first move, and it usually disappoints. The clock mostly runs before anyone opens the study, while an order gets completed, a comparison gets found, a protocol gets redone, or nobody owns the next step at all. We split TAT into segments you can measure, then argue about which ones are worth fixing first.
Prior authorization
Denials on imaging claims are rarely a disagreement about clinical judgment. They come from a modality that does not match what was approved, an authorization that expired before the patient showed up, a wrong CPT or contrast flag, an outpatient study billed as hospital-based. Every one of those traces back to a specific front-end step, which is the only place it can be caught before the scan happens.
Who this is for
Imaging directors, radiology operations and quality leads, PACS and RIS administrators, scheduling and authorization staff, and whoever ends up answering for turnaround time in the monthly review. What you get here is process, ownership, and checks you can run against the systems you already license. None of it is advice about how to read a study.
Every post answers the question in its title in the first paragraph, defines its terms, and ends with FAQs plus sources for any figure we cite. There is no publishing calendar. We post when we have something specific to say, which is why the list above is short. For how this thinking turns into product, read how Corena makes a study read-ready.