In this issue, Shlomit Goldberg-Stein, MD, Chair of the 2024 ACR® Quality & Safety + Informatics Conference (QS+I) Planning Committee, discusses what’s new this year and how attendance can positively impact patient care and your career. The conference kicks off Sept. 19 — it’s not too late to attend virtually or in person. Register today!
What is the 2024 QS+I conference all about?
The theme of this year’s conference is “Shared Goals, Improved Outcomes.” By building a community focused on setting and achieving shared goals, together we can improve patient outcomes. The conference aims to foster collaboration and drive improvement and positive change in radiology. The 2024 conference will be held Sept. 19–21 at the Grand Hyatt in Washington, DC. Registrants can attend in person or virtually.
The QS+I conference is the single radiology conference that is truly focused on quality and safety. Every year it draws experts in the field for three days of high-quality content, discussion and sharing. The conference is also perfectly sized and well arranged to allow for successful networking. It's easy to make connections and create new partnerships because of the openness of the attendees, the overall culture of the conference and the multiple venues for discussions — during the breakfasts, lunches, breakout sessions and cocktail hours.
Who should attend the QS+I Conference?
The QS+I Conference consistently hosts and attracts the top experts and leaders from all types of radiology practices and settings. For anybody interested or involved in radiology quality and safety, operations or informatics, there's really no better conference to meet people who are working on similar problems and to connect with experts who offer their advice. We also have multiple vendors on-site for open discussion. The conference is well-suited for professionals at all levels, including trainees, early- and mid-career radiologists, radiology care team members and leaders in the field.
What is the importance of this conference in terms of improving patient care?
A major theme in quality and safety is the idea that iterative change can drive successful improvements in patient care delivery. Attending the QS+I Conference with a growth mindset and being open to learning from others can directly impact your ability to create positive change within your organization. In my experience, attending meetings where like-minded radiologists and healthcare professionals are gathered to discuss the issues of the day can be transformative in your own practice. Our conference is meant to be a marketplace for new ideas and creativity, but it also has a very practical agenda of providing attendees with concrete tools and next steps to solve local problems when they return home to their own institutions.
What are the benefits of registering for the virtual event if someone can’t attend in person?
The 2024 virtual conference will provide all the robust content that on-site attendees are going to experience, with the exception of some of the breakout sessions. If you cannot attend in person, the virtual conference is a solid alternative option. All attendees, virtual and in person, will also be able to access the content on demand after the conference is over. The conference kicks off Sept. 19, so register today for the virtual program.
How did you determine the content for this year’s conference?
The 2024 conference builds on efforts over the last few years by the Quality and Safety Planning Committee to engage not only those interested and invested in quality and safety, but also those with roles in clinical operations and informatics. We have worked collaboratively with the ACR Informatics Planning Committee to create exceptional content that will reach all clinical leaders in radiology. Similar to last year’s meeting, day one of the conference is mostly focused on quality and safety topics, and day three is mostly focused on informatics topics, with the middle day providing shared topics that have been planned jointly by the Quality and Safety Planning and the Informatics Planning Committees. We even have one session that's dedicated to what quality and safety can teach informatics and vice versa. This collaborative approach has created wonderful synergies in learning and will provide impactful content for all attendees.
Why does it make sense to bring these topics together with a collaborative focus?
In clinical practice, we are all working together, and these collaborations are where the magic really happens. In quality, when you work on a project to create a positive change, you might need an informatics solution to bring that change to scale. In informatics, you might have developed a powerful tool, but are looking to define the problem it would best solve, which can be revealed through collaboration with the quality and safety team. We felt that providing a venue for these collaborative discussions mimicking clinical practice just made sense.
What's new for the QS+I Conference in 2024?
The conference will open with a keynote address by Ashwini Davison, MD, FACP, FAMIA. Prior to her career as a cloud champion at Amazon Web Services (AWS), she was full-time faculty in informatics and population health at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine where she worked at the intersection of healthcare, technology, education and research. She now works closely with AWS’ Health AI services team and AWS' robust network of imaging and digital pathology partners to ensure that their workflows and data foundation successfully harness the power of AI in this ever-evolving landscape.
New in 2024, the conference is offering a mentorship program on learning from error and implementing peer learning in your organization. This will be run by experts serving on the ACR Peer Learning Committee. Interested conference participants will be paired up with on-site mentors, and these relationships are likely to extend beyond the conference. There is also a dedicated session with speakers devoted to this topic.
We also intend to remain current with emerging changes in radiology. We felt a strong need to address the current workforce challenges that radiology is facing, specifically focusing on the question of how we can maintain quality in a workforce shortage, with soaring imaging volumes and too few radiologists. There are simply not enough radiologists to complete the work today, and there is an insufficient pipeline to fulfill the needs in the near future. And the question is, how can we do our best work and also continue to improve patient care in that environment? We're going to hear about multiple approaches to this problem from different experts tackling this issue.
What other key themes or topics are on tap?
Our opening session is entitled, “How Quality Improvement Radiology Leaders Impact Healthcare.” This session will provide participants with the perspectives of three radiology leaders who began their careers in quality and safety, but then went on to have a much larger impact on healthcare. We will learn from leaders who achieved this in three settings: Private practice, academic university environment and an urban hospital system with an underserved population.
We have a session entitled, “Addition by Subtraction,” which will cover improving quality by addressing waste and excess in imaging care delivery. There’s also a joint session with quality and informatics leaders focused on measuring and monitoring the clinical implementation of AI, which explores implementation strategies for AI tools, accounting for the need to balance value, safety and performance.
Additionally, we have several breakout sessions planned for problem-based learning with active engagement. Topics include redesigning the electronic health record to drive quality improvement, the role of AI in equity-informed, high-reliability organizations and more. A dedicated breakout session will center discussions on the ACR Learning Network, providing participants with information and perspectives on the improvement collaboratives: Improving lung cancer screening access, mammography positioning quality, prostate MR image quality and follow up for recommendations for actionable incidental pulmonary nodules.
What actionable steps can attendees take to enhance their learning experience at the conference and improve quality of care?
Step one: Ensure you're not attending alone. Bring someone from your team along so you can experience the meeting together and bring lessons and fresh ideas back to your organization.
Step two: Take advantage of mentorship and networking opportunities at the meeting. The conference is a three-day event and will allow you form and deepen connections that will carry you forward on your quality improvement journey.
Step three: Follow the conference on X at #QSI2024 . We have a new social media planning committee member who will be posting real-time information about the conference sessions, content and hot topics, with links to the articles that are being cited and discussed. For virtual attendees, this could be a key way to engage with experts and participants.
Step four: Remember that continuous learning is at the heart of all quality improvement practice. So, after the conference, seek to become involved in one of the many ACR quality and safety committees, which will offer opportunities for learning and collaboration.
In the Spotlight
Shlomit Goldberg-Stein, MD, is an Associate Professor of Radiology and a musculoskeletal radiologist at Northwell Health/Hofstra Medical School. She serves as the Radiology Residency Program Director at Lenox Hill Hospital of Northwell Health.
Dr. Stein completed both her residency in diagnostic radiology and her fellowship in musculoskeletal imaging and intervention at the Massachusetts General Hospital of Harvard Medical School. She was a GE-SCARD LEAD fellow and has served in many leadership roles in both quality and operations, including Director of Report Quality and Structured Reporting and Director of Operational Improvement at Montefiore/Einstein in New York City.
Dr. Stein currently serves as Chair of the 2024 ACR Quality, Safety + Informatics Conference Planning Committee, previously serving a two-year term as Vice Chair. She is a member of the New York State Radiological Society board and serves as Co-Chair of its Quality & Safety Committee. She is an also active member of the ACR Peer Learning Committee and led the creation of a pathway for ACR Peer Learning accreditation.