Methods Basic situations and quality control indexes of ultrasound departments were surveyed and analyzed in 21 secondary hospitals and 31 tertiary hospitals in Dongguan, China from January 1, 2020 to December 31, 2020. The differences of basic situations (staff of ultrasound departments, age of ultrasonic doctors, professional title of ultrasonic doctors, and educational qualification of ultrasonic doctors) were compared between secondary hospitals and tertiary hospitals by using by chi-square test. The rank sum test was used to compare the differences of quality control indexes (structural quality indexes, process quality indexes, and result quality indexes) between secondary hospitals and tertiary hospitals.
Results Regarding basic situations, there were statistically significant differences in the staff of ultrasound departments, age of ultrasonic doctors, and educational qualification of ultrasonic doctors between secondary hospitals and tertiary hospitals (χ2=15.499, 8.418, and 95.375, P=0.001, =0.038, and <0.001, respectively). However, the professional title of ultrasonic doctors had no statistically significant difference (χ2=3.674, P>0.05). With regard to quality control indexes between secondary hospitals and tertiary hospitals, structure quality indexes including the average daily ultrasound examination amount in outpatients, emergency cases, cases of physical examination, cases of in-hospital ultrasound examination, and the ratio between the number of ultrasonic doctors and patients [183.94 (107.14, 266.11) patients/day vs 383.85 (174.19, 557.50) patients/day; 19.02(6.03, 25.37) patients/day vs 24.72 (5.32, 36.51) patients/day; 27.66 (8.76, 36.90) patients/day vs 50.94 (30.29, 115.29) patients/day; 49.55 (32.96, 69.94) patients/day vs 84.80 (43.76, 303.47) patients/day; 1.24 (0.96, 1.64) per ten thousand patients vs 0.89 (0.79, 1.18) per ten thousand patients] exhibited statistically significant differences (U=176.000, 141.00, 141.000, 196.000, and 203.000, P=0.005, 0.002, 0.002, 0.016, and 0.022, respectively), while the ratio between the number of ultrasonic doctors and diagnostic instruments had no statistically significant difference (U=265.000, P>0.05). For process quality indexes, neither the average inpatient ultrasound appointment time nor the cases with ultrasound critical value report showed a statistically significant difference (U=313.000 and 239.500, respectively, P>0.05). Regarding result quality indexes, the compliance rate of ultrasound diagnosis [90.00% (78.50%, 92.10%) vs 90.85% (88.00%, 95.00%)] had a statistically significant difference (U=150.000, P=0.038), but the positive rate of ultrasound reports had no statistically significant difference (U=301.000, P>0.05).
Conclusion In order to solve the main problems that ultrasonic doctors are urgently needed in tertiary hospitals and poorly educated in secondary hospitals in Dongguan, the ultrasound departments should recruit new staff and reeducate them after graduation. In the future, the government should formulate policies to improve the quality of ultrasound departments based on their own characteristics.