For years, hospitals and imaging facilities considered MRI accidents inevitable. Sooner or later a floor polisher, a wheelchair or a fire extinguisher would get drawn into the MRI. Perhaps they would damage coils, phantoms or other components, but this was just ‘the cost of doing business’ in Magnetic Resonance Imaging.
Following a tragic MRI death several years ago, the radiology community recognized that MRI safety is more important than ever before. With the exploding growth in diagnostic imaging and rapid adoption of 3.0 T (Tesla) machines, the stakes for patient safety grow every day.
Most recently, new classifications of 'MR Safe', 'MR Conditional' and 'MR Unsafe' have been developed to help facilities discern the relative safety of different objects and devices.
However, governing safety regulations, including accreditation for MRI providers from the Joint Commission for Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) and the American College of Radiology (ACR), have not kept up. Updates and Alerts from these organizations are addressing growing safety concerns and sentinel events.
MRI-Planning is here to compliment the existing body of clinical safety knowledge, including that developed by the ACR, Dr. Emanuel Kanal, FACR, ECRI, and Dr. Frank Shellock, Ph.D. Our purpose is to provide resources for vendors, hospitals, imaging centers and their architects for the enhancement of facility safety: how the planning, design and construction of an MRI magnet room, in fact the whole MRI facility, supports patient safety and efficient throughput.
Beyond serving as a clearinghouse for existing resources, such as the safety zones from the ACR’s White Paper on MR Safety, this site and Junk Architects are committed to the ongoing development of tools to improve safety and financial performance of MRI facilities. Through continual updates to this site and the companion monthly MRI Newsletter, we provide new resources for those in MRI to dramatically improve care, safety and profitability.
Hiring An MRI Architect
