~10%
reduction in CTPAs at early adopter sites
£128k
avoided costs per year
0
adverse safety events throughout
The CTPA pathway audit benchmarks how NHS organisations assess and manage suspected pulmonary embolism (blood clots in the lungs), examining the appropriateness of CT scan requests, diagnostic pathways, and time-to-diagnosis across member trusts. The data helps organisations optimise their diagnostic protocols, reduce unnecessary imaging, and improve patient outcomes through comparative performance metrics.
The RCR’s 2025 Clinical Radiology Census shows 38% of radiology departments operating under recruitment freezes — double the figure from last year. The NHS spent £362 million on outsourcing, insourcing and locums in 2024/25. Demand for complex imaging is growing at more than twice the rate of the workforce.
Hiring alone will not close that gap. Understanding whether CTPA demand is producing the right diagnostic yield — and where the pathway can be improved — is part of the answer. That is what the CTPA audit, now included in NHSBN acute membership, helps trusts to do.
How the audit works:
1. Built from reports your already produce
Beyond a data extract and a short pathway survey, no additional clinical input is required until the report is generated.
2. AI analysis of your full dataset
Demand, diagnostic yeild and pathway compliance are analysed at a scale manual audit cannot reach.
3. Clinically validated, clinically owed
The audit is a retrospective service evaluation, through which the findings inform pathway optimisation discussions, and all decisions remain with your clinical teams.
4. Actionable findings, benchmarked against national standards
You site report benchmarks diagnostic yield against RCR-recommended ranges, quantifies the financial and reporting capacity opportunity and sets out specific, prioritised recommendations.
“CLEARaudit has shown what's possible when LLM-based audit is applied at scale across a real NHS network.
Working across roughly 15 Midlands trusts, we're now surfacing governance issues that would otherwise stay hidden in routine reporting.”
David Rosewarne, Consultant Radiologist
The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust
Data security and clinical safety.
The audit is completed in a secure environment with defined data specifications and minimum necessary principles. Information governance requirements are agreed and supported during onboarding. A full audit trail of ingestion and processing steps is maintained throughout.