Out-of-hours radiology scans (FOI)

​Request

A

Please confirm the total number of out-of-hours radiology scans performed by Health and Community Services over the past five years, broken down by year. 

B

Please provide a breakdown of the types of radiology scans (for example, X-rays, CT scans, MRI scans, ultrasound scans) performed out of hours for each of the past five years.

Response

The number of examinations performed out-of-hours by Health and Community Services’ Radiology Department each year from 2019 to 2023, and for 2024 to date (excluding those performed on Bank Holidays), is detailed in the attached table.

Table.pdf​

Annual totals are provided for the department’s out-of-hours provision as a whole and broken down by imaging modality. Figures represent examinations which were carried out on weekends and those which took place between the hours of 5pm to 8:30am on weeknights. In all cases, these are performed as emergency examinations.

There is no on-call / emergency MRI service. The MRI service may schedule additional lists outside of the standard working week to address service demand. These are not considered out-of-hours examinations.

Examinations completed over Bank Holidays are not included in the count, as the Radiology Information System is not configured in such a way that these can be differentiated from standard working weekdays for reporting. Identifying out-of-hours scans performed on Bank Holidays for each year would require significant manual input and the creation of new datasets. A Scheduled Public Authority is not required to create or manipulate data in order to respond to Freedom of Information requests. Therefore, Article 3 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied.

Article applied

Article 3 - Meaning of “information held by a public authority”

For the purposes of this Law, information is held by a public authority if –

(a)     it is held by the authority, otherwise than on behalf of another person; or

(b)     it is held by another person on behalf of the authority.​