ACR MRI burn complaint letter.
Back in November 2016 I filed a complaint against the Imaging facility where I was burned with the ACR (American College of Radiology). 6 months later I had heard nothing back so I followed up in June 2017. The ACR is the body responsible for accrediting an Imaging facility. There are supposedly strict requirements a facility must pass to be awarded the ‘prestigious’ ACR accreditation. Today, July 20th I finally received a response to my complaint. Here is what it said :
Now this seemed a little weak for me so I called the director. I asked what exactly they had investigated. I wanted to know what procedures they had followed to determine whether their ‘accredited’ facility had contravened any rules or safety protocol’s. The response I got was ‘Our investigation is private and confidential and we are not at liberty to discuss it with you’. I said but I’m the victim here. I’m the one who actually filed the grievance. Don’t I have a right to know what procedures you followed even if you don’t tell me specifics about the results. ‘No, it’s confidential’, she said. I asked- how do I know you didn’t just tell your secretary to call the facility and as long as they said everything was good on that day you would mark the case ‘resolved’. I asked if she had seen the photographs I submitted along with my complaint. I asked if they had sent anyone out to the site to investigate the environment that existed on the day I was burned or to review MRI machine logs. ‘It’s confidential’ she said. Are you kidding me ? I asked if the fact that the facility had not even so much as acknowledged one of the certified complaint letters send to them contravened any of their ‘accreditation’ requirements. When she said the facility must respond to patient complaints, I asked why? You say they ‘must’, but who is enforcing that? Certainly not ACR. Its a meaningless comment. She had no answer. I know for a fact that very little if anything was done as part of this investigation because there were at least half a dozen safety violations in effect during my MRI scan – I was not put in a robe, no padding was used around my body, I was not told to put my arms down by my side instead of crossed at my chest etc. Apart from the real cause of the MRI burn which I believe to be related to either operator error or machine malfunction, these simple things would at least have been discovered if a proper investigation was performed.
Slightly annoyed about the comment in the letter (above) about following up with my primary care physician, I let her know that this was obvious and completely redundant. I asked her if she actually believed that after nearly 8 months of an horrendous MRI burn injury it would never have occurred to me to go and seek medical advice. Huh ?
So here’s the interesting moral to this story. The American College of Radiologists is a self formed non-profit organization with no government oversight. They have taken it upon themselves to create an accreditation program that Radiology Clinics can elect to participate in, in order to receive an accreditation certificate. The general public is then led to believe that this certification provides them an extra level of safety when they see the logo. This obviously wasn’t the case with me. In my opinion the fact that the ACR is self regulating deflates the validity of the certification. Keep in mind – It is NOT in the ACR’s best interests to acknowledge that an adverse event such as mine occurred at one of their ‘accredited’ institutions. This would cast a shadow on their accreditation process and put the safety of the general public into question. Much easier to say they conducted an investigation, that everything was in order and hope the complainant just disappears.
Guess what, that’s not going to happen.