GRID helps participants monitor and improve their general radiology practices through benchmarking using process and outcome measures. There are four types of data that may be submitted:

  • The Facility form collects baseline statistics for the site. The data are required upon initial registration, and, thereafter, at the beginning of a calendar year. There are three categories:

    • Practice size, including number of admissions, number of procedures by modality, etc., using data from the previous year, as well as personnel headcount. This information helps determine which subsequent measures should be collected (e.g. measures by type of imaging performed) and determines which practice size cohort to use for comparison reports.

    • Descriptive characteristics, such as which systems are in place (e.g. electronic report access 24/7), which protocols are documented, and what types of equipment are used. These data help participants see how many other facilities are using similar systems and documented protocols.

    • Incident data, comprised of MRI Incidents and Other Incidents. These data are for the previous calendar year and are included in facility comparison reports.

The Facility form is required before a Monthly Data Form by Facility or Monthly Data Form by Physician can be submitted. 

  • The Monthly Data Form by Facility captures measures for the entire facility:

    • Process measures, such as outpatient wait time, elapsed time from order to exam for inpatients, and turnaround time.

    • Outcome measures, such as percentage of liver and lung biopsies performed that were reported as non-diagnostic.

  • Monthly Physician data can be uploaded, via the Monthly Data Form by Physician, to help monitor performance for specific physicians, using a subset of process and outcome measures.

  • Exam-Level data must be used to report turnaround time for MIPS (formerly PQRS) reporting. Providing exam-level data to GRID helps physicians meet the six-measure threshold for MIPS reporting by calculating CMS-approved Non-MIPS measures, specially defined by the ACR. Exam-level data also allows GRID to generate reports to compare physicians' performance against the entire GRID population. A Facility form is not required in order for exam-level data to be submitted to GRID, and the Monthly Data Form by Facility form cannot be used for MIPS submissions.


Users may submit facility and physician data to GRID via manual data entry or data file upload. Exam-level data may be submitted via web-based data transmission. 


Printable versions of the manual data entry forms are available via the GRID Forms link in the Forms and Data Dictionary menu. GRID Forms and Data Dictionary Menu


The Data Dictionary item directs you to a PDF document which defines all of the data elements. See Manual Data Entry for an overview of the online data entry process.


Facility and physician data may also be submitted via flat file upload to the registry. See GRID Data File Uploads for details.


All software vendors and interested facilities must be certified for web-based data transmission before submitting exam-level data. A list of certified vendors is available on the ACR GRID webpage. 




Next: Manual Entry: Facility Form