The reading and acknowledging of electronic alerts about the critical imaging studies might also not assure timely response since the sending of an alert to more than one physician just doubles the chance that it will be ignored.

This was concluded from the findings of a study conducted from a study of 1,196 critical imaging notifications sent in an integrated electronic medical system.

It was observed that 7.2 percent of those alerts received no follow-up for at least a month. The odds of not getting a response were greater when the alerts were sent to two recipients.

Out of the 92 alerts that were not responded to, 24 were chest x-rays that revealed “nodular density”, 12 suspected aneurysms on abdominal x-rays, a spinal cord stenosis, and x-rays that pointed towards kidney, liver or ovarian cancer.

It was however noticed that it was easier to ignore electronic alerts but a phone call from the radiologist was not.

Hardeep Singh, MD, MPH, of the Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center and Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, and colleagues wrote that the most disappointing incidences were the ones where even the alerts with a flag, showing that the physician who has ordered the report has read them, did not get response on time.

During the study, 123,638 imaging studies which included CT scans, untrasound studies, MRIs and mammograms were conducted which generated 1,196 critical alert messages. It was found that 217 of these were never acknowledged.

They concluded that "an EMR that facilitates transmission and availability of critical imaging results to the [healthcare provider] through either automated notification or direct access of primary report does not eliminate the problem of missed test results."