Awareness, Utilization, and Education of the ACR Appropriateness Criteria: A Review and Future Directions

The low rate of incorporation of the AC into clinical practice may reflect the lack of formal training in appropriate imaging order practices, specifically in the use of the AC, in both undergraduate and graduate medical education. The integration of the AC into decision support may reduce overutilization, but this has not been fully studied. Greater integration of the AC into medical training would require more universal physician buy-in to use the AC as a resource to optimize imaging utilization. This further requires sustained efforts to improve the “user-friendliness” of the AC and maximization of collaboration with nonradiology specialties in the development of the AC.