Two Milwaukee County hospitals performed many more abdominal imaging tests than other hospitals around the country, potentially exposing patients to unnecessary radiation, according to new federal data. Nearly 58% of the outpatient CT scans of the abdomen performed at Wheaton Franciscan-St. Francis in Milwaukee were double scans - meaning that technicians performed one CT scan with a contrast dye followed by a second without dye, according to the federal government's Hospital Compare website. More than 64% of scans at Wheaton Franciscan-Franklin in Franklin were double scans. By contrast, hospitals around the state performed double scans on only 11% of the outpatients who received the scans, according to the data from 2008.
