by
Nancy Ryerson, Staff Writer | December 30, 2013
From the December 2013 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
“When preliminary reads are gone, it’s going to become more incumbent to have a QA process. We don’t necessarily have to review every exam a second time, but a sampling of maybe five percent — I think that will be demanded in order to promote the quality of the service.”
Some teleradiology companies work in their own quality assurance procedures. Radisphere, for one, uses data gleaned from its teleradiologists’ work to determine what kind of studies are most likely to have errors, and which could use a second opinion.
“Our technology will randomly select two percent of all the cases, make them anonymous and assign them to a second radiologist,” says Hank Schlissberg, chief growth officer at Radisphere, a cloud-based radiology company. “They think they’re just reading a case that’s in their queue. With this method, we’ve found that we miss broken pinkies all the time, for example, so we know to look out for that.”
And regardless of which side of the teleradiology debate you fall on, facilities that partake may be reassured by a white paper published in May by the American College of Radiology’s Teleradiology Task Force, which aimed to create guidelines for the practice.
“We created this in the hopes that it will raise the standards across the industry, so when it’s all done, you’ll have better patient care,” said Ezequiel Silva, task force chair.
The white paper encourages teleradiology companies to put patients first, and notes that facilities should emphasize on-site service over off-site. Teleradiology companies don’t see the guidelines impacting their business, but they’re happy for the validation the task force’s creation suggests.
“It was fair and balanced, and hit on some of the key issues involved in teleradiology,” says Howard Reis, vice president of business development at Teleradiology Specialists.
Daytime dynamic
Powered by the ability to offer final reads and specialty services, teleradiology companies have sought out daytime opportunities as well.
“On-site radiologists need to concentrate on the things that need to be done on-site, like interventional procedures, mammography and consultation with the medical staff, all of the things that sometimes radiologists in the traditional environment don’t have enough time to do,” says Aris’ Paul Johnson. “Unfortunately, they’ll get caught in an interventional procedure that’s supposed to take 30 minutes and it takes two hours, then there’s a huge backlog of a work-list that they can’t see the end of, and turnaround times become a problem.”
