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.
On a Pending shift, close each study you open with one result: blocked, a read-ready proposal, or unknown. A block names the failed check, an owner, and the next action. A read-ready proposal means the site's required checks passed and a person may approve the handoff. Unknown means a required check could not be finished, so the study stays in review. Image interpretation stays with the radiologist.
Leave a result before you move on
A finished exam can sit in Pending with a full set of images. The person on shift still has to say what happened to the record. What makes a study read-ready is the catalog of checks your site requires. This checklist is the note you leave before you open the next one.
A left-knee MRI completes at 7:40. You open it at 8:05. The order says left. The tech note says right. The images are in the archive. The result is blocked: laterality does not agree, the person who can correct the source owns the fix, and the laterality check runs again after that correction lands. "Looks off" in a sticky note sends the next person back to the same study with no trail.
Walk the study in the same order
Two people on the same shift will skip different fields when the order lives in someone's head. Write the sequence down and use that. The fields come from the rules your site already approved.
- Confirm you are on the study you meant to open. Read any tag, task, or comment the previous shift already left.
- Walk the required checks in the site's order: order agreement, laterality, reason for exam, documents, priors, and open holds, or whichever of those your policy actually requires. The first failed required check is the result. A clean field later in the list does not clear it.
- When a required document, prior, or note cannot be read or confirmed, mark the study unknown and name the missing evidence. A complete image set does not fill that gap.
- When every required check passes and no hold is still open, record a read-ready proposal. Leaving Pending, and choosing the reader, happen after a person approves the handoff.
- When you cannot find the rule that applies, mark the study unknown and name the rule you were looking for.
A scanned reason for exam that will not open is unknown. The images can be a full series. The indication is still missing until someone supplies a copy a reviewer can read, and that check runs again.
Make a block usable by the next person
A blocked study needs three things another person can act on without repeating your review: which check failed, who owns the next step, and what has to change before that check runs again. Tags, reasons, and tasks are the usual places that context already lives, on sites that use them. The labels on the screen vary by vendor. The handoff stays the same.
One owner per gap. A second ticket on the same laterality conflict makes the queue look busier and the closure look finished. Closing the ticket because someone replied is a separate event from a passed recheck. The source changes first. Then the check that failed runs again. Until then the study stays blocked.
Hand off what is still open
The next shift should see open blocks and unknowns without starting over. Each note already says the unfinished check, the owner, and when you last touched the study. Read-ready proposals waiting on a person sit apart from blocks, so a study that passed its checks does not age in the same pile as one waiting on a site.
Across facilities, the owner is often someone at the site that performed the exam, and that coverage changes by shift. How to staff Pending QC across sites is the longer account of who is actually there to take the work.
At the end of the shift, count from your own queue: how many you marked blocked, how many stayed unknown, how many you proposed as read-ready, and how many came back from the reader. Keep those four counts. They are the baseline for this queue.
Where Corena fits
Corena reviews studies in Pending against the readiness checks an organization has approved. It shows the check outcome, the evidence it used, and a proposed next step. A missing or conflicting field stays unknown. A person decides what happens next. Image interpretation, the report, and reader assignment stay with the practice.
If you want to compare those recommendations with the dispositions your shift already leaves, request a demo. Walk cases your admins know, with source writes off, and see where the proposed result matches the call they would make.
Frequently asked questions
- How is this different from the read-ready definition?
- The read-ready post lists the checks a site usually requires. This checklist is the disposition you leave during a shift: blocked, a read-ready proposal, or unknown, with an owner when the work is unfinished.
- When is a complete image set enough to propose read-ready?
- After the site's required checks pass. Order agreement, documents, priors, and open holds still have to be reviewed when policy requires them. If a required check cannot be finished, record unknown.
- What belongs on a blocked study?
- The check that failed, the person or role who will clear it, and what has to change before that check runs again. A tag or comment with no owner sends the next shift back to the start.
- Does a read-ready proposal mean the study left Pending?
- It means the required checks passed and a person may approve the handoff. Confirming the study left Pending is a separate look at the source. Reader assignment happens in the reading workflow after that.
- Who changes the source record?
- Your team does, through the correction path you already use. Corena shows the check outcome and a proposed next step for a person to review. Compare it with source writes off, on studies your admins already know.
Keep reading
See Corena check a study for read-readiness — before it reaches the radiologist.
Corena flags what is missing and routes exceptions to a named human. Clean studies keep moving; they do not wait on a click.