by
Nancy Ryerson, Staff Writer | December 30, 2013
From the December 2013 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
Meanwhile, despite teleradiology’s current popularity, the field still experiences a stigma from some hospitals, leading some facilities to provide teleradiology services only to their own hospitals system.
Massachusetts General Hospital, once a popular teleradiology provider, has scaled back its services to other hospitals, focusing instead on covering its satellite campuses.
“For example, we provide teleradiology at our Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard hospitals because we don’t have radiologists there 24/7,” says James Brink, chief of radiology at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Brink agrees that radiologists need to step up or risk being replaced. He suggests that sometimes, in-house groups that lose their contract only have themselves to blame.
“One of the worst things that can happen is if a group outsources teleradiology to a company that’s perceived as better than the day company, then they really shot themselves in the foot, because now the teleradiology can say we’ll cover daytime too,” says Brink. “That’s happened. And it’s not complimentary to the group to which it happened, because number one, they were willing to outsource at night, and number two, they weren’t providing the value add they should have been, to make their own hospital value what they’re bringing.”
Brink agrees that specialty teleradiology is valuable for small radiology practices, but notes that because radiology practices, both on and off site, are getting larger, practices that cannot provide their own nighttime and specialty service may become less common.
It’s also possible that larger, academic hospitals will help pick up the slack for rural hospitals in their region more often.
Saint Louis University Hospital currently uses teleradiology services at one of the community hospitals in its network, St. Mary’s, but hopes to move away from it altogether and perhaps offer teleradiology to area hospitals itself.
“Here, our model is based on sub-specialization, so at some point we would be interested in offering teleradiology services to other small practices, rural practices that don’t have the subspecialty inhouse,” says Jeff Brown, chief of radiology at SLU.
We can work it out
For now, at least, teleradiology seems to be here to stay, and some radiologists think there may be a way to for rads and telerads to operate in perfect harmony — or at least in a way that’s good for patients.
“There are places where certain parts of radiology should be efficient, and there’s a place that should not go to that model,” says Jim Anderson, a radiologist at OHSU Hospital in Portland, Ore. He cites certain spine studies and basic chest X-rays as studies that could be sent off-site without any detriment to patient care. “Basically when you’re just comparing an old study with a new one and looking for visuals, you don’t need to be able to talk with a clinician, because that’s already been established.”
