Quality and Patient Safety

With the growing number of new radiopharmaceuticals, the SNMMI saw an opportunity to convene and develop resources to ensure patients receive high quality and safe care. The SNMMI Committee on Quality and Patient Safety is co-chaired by Dr. Munir Ghesani and Dr. Helen Nadel. Our mission is to, "Ensure that SNMMI members provide high quality care to their patients during examination and in treatments they perform". The committee identified several goals, including:

• Draft a paper outlining ‘best practices’ for the administration of radiopharmaceutical therapies
• Work with radiopharmaceutical developers and distributors to ensure the handling and labeling of all radiopharmaceuticals from manufacture to administration to the patient
• Create a webpage to house all safety-related tools on the SNMMI website

Nuclear Medicine Radiation Dose Tool 

With this tool, specify the nuclear medicine procedure, the injected activity, and the patient model (gender, age) to calculate the effective dose for this procedure.

Pediatric Injected Activity Tool

With this tool, specify the nuclear medicine procedure and the pediatric patient’s weight to find the recommended administered activity for the patient.

Procedure Standards

The procedure standards help to identify those elements of the procedure that are most important in obtaining a high-quality examination, while simultaneously controlling costs. Use of procedure standards will increase the applicability of clinical research among multiple institutions, in turn, increasing the value of research studies, particularly in the field of technology assessment. In the interest of creating strong, comprehensive documents, some standards were formally adopted by SNMMI in collaboration with other professional organizations.

Appropriate Use Criteria (AUC)

Appropriate Use Criteria (AUC) are statements that contain indications describing when, and how often, an intervention should be performed under the auspices of scientific evidence, clinical judgment, and patient values while avoiding unnecessary provisions of services. SNMMI follows a balanced multidisciplinary approach to guidance development by including various stakeholders in the development process.

Practice Accreditation

Continuing quality assurance is an integral part of the present-day practice of medicine. The Intersocietal Accreditation Commission (IAC), Nuclear/PET offers accreditation as an increasingly renowned method for Nuclear Medicine, Nuclear Cardiology and PET facilities to evaluate and demonstrate the level of patient care they provide. Coming soon in 2024, The IAC will accredit facilities specific to radiopharmaceutical therapy. This new program is designed to accredit facilities that perform radiopharmaceutical therapy procedures by ensuring that the facility meets requirements for training and education, performance and documentation of radiopharmaceutical therapy procedures.  

Image Gently

Image Gently and the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI) created the “Go With the Guidelines” awareness campaign to encourage community hospitals, academic hospitals and clinics to observe standardized guidelines on radiopharmaceutical dose for pediatric patients.

Image Wisely

Image Wisely was created with the objective of lowering the amount of radiation used in medically necessary imaging studies and eliminating unnecessary procedures.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)

Follow the NRC’s Proposed Rule on “Reporting Nuclear Medicine Injection Extravasations as Medical Events”.

Webinars

A variety of webinars relevant to SNMMI, dealing with topics ranging from new guidelines to how to best comply with the Physician Quality Reporting System.