Why does it take 6 weeks for chest xray results?

[MagicWorkout]

I had mine 5 weeks ago and apparently the timescale for results is 6 weeks, no one is allowed to chase it up before then.

By coincidence, a colleague, different GP, different hospital also had a chest xray a couple of weeks before I did. She is past the 6 week timeframe ,but doesn't have the results either and no one can tell her when she will.

Surely if these tests find what they're looking for a 6 week delay for treatment really matters?

DH has a chest Xray just over a year ago, it was back to GP very quickly. What's going on?

Shortage of radiologists. This impacts on reporting times as there is literally more coming in every day than can be reported in a day and because it takes time away from supporting training of new radiologists and reporting radiographers so it never gets any better. Trusts can send images to private reporting companies but as it’s so expensive they may only do it in quantities that keep them just within breach targets. Fwiw my trust usually gets an outpatient report out within 2 weeks but I know others are taking 2 months so lots of variation. Inpatients and urgent outpatients (inc those flagged up as having something unexpected on them) and 2 week wait patients will be prioritised followed by those who need a report by a particular clinic date so standard GP requests end up taking longest.

I had a chest ray couple of months ago and report was back with gp exactly a week later

Yeah it’s a shortage of radiologists, they are the people that interpret and report on X-rays, scans etc..

I'm a radiographer, we have a shortage of radiologists and reporting Radiographers, the backlog is huge and we have staff sickness and winter pressures to deal with too now. We are spending a fortune on outsourcing to locum companies, some of whom are abroad.

The hospital patients will take priority, but if there is anything concerning on a GP film the Radiographers will flag it up to a radiologist for urgent report, they know what appearances to flag up even if they don't know exactly what the disease is.

It was a very well for the recent government announcements about new scanners and diagnostic equipment but they'll be useless without Radiographers doing the scans and x-rays and Radiologists reporting them, they haven't a clueit seems, just PR exercise. Nearly everynewsstation also managed to discus these proposals with out a single mention of a Radiographer, which shows how little they understand of is needed to deal with this back log...