Effectiveness of Outpatient Echocardiogram Use in Saving Time and Money

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Modern cardiology's diagnostic foundation is echocardiography, which has seen growing use over the past 20 years due to its widespread availability and low risk. The American College of Cardiology Foundation and other imaging associations published the 2007 Appropriate Use Criteria (AUC) to regulate echocardiography imaging procedures in response to worries about the abuse of echocardiography. Following investigations have revealed that following the AUC criteria along with an educational and feedback intervention based on the AUC has improved cardiac imaging ordering patterns among attending physicians and physicians-in-training. Reducing low-value echocardiogram is crucial for our sizable urban medical institution, which treats a sizable portion of the population who are impoverished. Like many other institutions, ours was affected by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, which necessitated considerable modifications in work-flow protocols to appropriately deploy resources in a system already dealing with high volumes and a backlog. AUC to direct the use of echocardiography in such a setting has significant cost and resource benefits. To reduce the danger of exposing patients, cardiac sonographers, and other personnel to COVID-19 in the outpatient setting, all non-urgent outpatient echocardiograms were delayed soon after the start of the pandemic. A remedy was urgently required due to the mounting exam backlog.