{
  "abstract": "Timely reporting of multichannel sleep studies is essential to support clinical decision-making, patient flow, and the 18-week Referral to Treatment (RTT) pathway. While DM01 standards monitor the completion of diagnostic sleep studies, they do not specifically address turnaround time (TAT) for reporting, which remains an important quality metric. The Association for Respiratory Technology and Physiology has highlighted the need to improve reporting TAT for multichannel sleep studies to support efficient service delivery (ARTP, 2025). A staff survey within our service at the Royal Wolverhampton NHS trust identified sleep reporting delays as a key area for improvement (ARTP, 2025). Between January 2024 and January 2025, more studies were reported outside allocated scoring time than within it, indicating an increasing pressure on reporting capacity.Analysis of allocated scoring sessions demonstrated under-utilisation of available scoring time. Environmental and process-related barriers were identified. A quality improvement meeting was held to review the data and develop interventions. From 17 March 2025, changes implemented to ensure daily protected live scoring, allocation of a designated live scorer to prioritise previous-day studies and plans for a dedicated sleep scoring workstation. Following a local audit, auto-analysis of moderate and severe studies with physiology overview was also implemented.In the first week following implementation, 100% of multichannel sleep studies were scored within 24/hours. A backlog of >300 studies awaiting scoring was fully resolved by 2 May 2025. Prior to intervention, reporting delays had increased to approximately 12 weeks by March 2025, despite earlier reductions from 8 to 6 weeks achieved through prioritisation of urgent studies. Post-intervention, a sustained 24-hour reporting turnaround was achieved.The introduction of live scoring with protected scoring time led to a significant and sustained reduction in reporting turnaround times for multichannel sleep studies. Although DM01 standards focus on completion of diagnostic testing rather than report TAT, this project supports downstream RTT performance and aligns with ARTP recommendations to improve reporting efficiency in sleep services. This quality improvement initiative demonstrates that targeted workflow redesign and protected scoring time can markedly improve reporting performance, service resilience and streamline diagnostic to outcome pathway.",
  "authors": [
    {
      "affiliations": [
        "The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust, Wolverhampton, United Kingdom"
      ],
      "name": "Shabana Chowdhury"
    },
    {
      "affiliations": [
        "The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust, Wolverhampton, United Kingdom"
      ],
      "name": "Megan Beacham"
    },
    {
      "affiliations": [
        "The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust, Wolverhampton, United Kingdom"
      ],
      "name": "Andrew Pritchard"
    }
  ],
  "title": "P27 A quality improvement project: The impact of live scoring on sleep reporting.",
  "uid": "39a383ab-aec8-5882-9ae9-22ca9688dce2"
}