I’ve been practicing radiology for more than 36 years. I started in 1973 at the Cleveland Clinic when radiology was all “bone and barium,” and there were many areas of the body we couldn’t even begin to evaluate.  

Since then, I started a traditional radiology group, was Chairman of Radiology at four hospitals, owned several imaging centers, started a RIS company that was acquired, and re-certified my Neuroradiology Certificate of Added Qualification twice.

In all that time, I’ve never seen as much change as there has been in the last two years. The field of radiology will never be the same, and I expect the next five years to bring change that is even more significant. 

New modalities and technologies are driving more demand for training and expertise. It has now become impossible to do everything. Competition for services exists everywhere and geography no longer matters. PACs have eliminated the personal relationship. Clinicians are demanding more service, faster TATs, and 24x7 availability.

Reimbursements are rapidly declining; as risk moves to providers, radiologists will be held accountable for the appropriate use of imaging and soon take financial risk for the accuracy of our diagnoses.  Radiology must change quickly to adapt.

Radiology Needs a New Delivery Model

Radiology is one of the most important clinical functions at any hospital. At more than $175 billion annually, it represents 7.5% of total U.S. healthcare spend with double-digit growth, and it touches nearly every major disease category and patient of the hospital. The current delivery model suffers from lack of scale, technology and standards. Due to its massive impact on hospital economics, patient safety, and quality of care, radiology has the potential to vastly change the healthcare delivery landscape.

As one of the pioneering national radiology groups in what will certainly be a natural evolution of local to regional to national players (as we have seen in ED, Hospitalists, Anesthesiology, and other specialties), Radisphere is getting it right. Our delivery model leverages scale and technology to deliver high quality, standards-based subspecialty radiology with a local touch. We are transparent and accountable to performance. We can be clinically flexible as we identify our strengths and weaknesses.

We are an intelligent choice for hospitals in a world of declining reimbursements where providers must be as productive and flexible as possible. We can deliver new ways to digest radiology results and communicate with colleagues as evidenced by our new iPhone application. We are able to reduce inappropriate and redundant imaging and measure our results to share in the benefit. And we have a greater passion for customer service than ever before.

Radisphere is The New Standard in Radiology

Our radiology delivery model is demonstrating real value to our hospital clients. It requires a heavy reliance on technology, scalability, significant support and back office capabilities, and the industry’s premier teleradiology network. We know our model is working because we have measurable results:

• Naples Community Hospital, our largest and one of our newest clients, is embracing our new model in a very public way. Their CEO, Allen Weiss, MD, is a huge supporter of our delivery model and talks to the benefits of NCH’s partnership with Radisphere in a video featured on our website. He shares multiple examples of how Radisphere has exceeded their expectations in our collaborative delivery of timely and accurate radiology services.
• Another southeast hospital grew its overall imaging volume by 5.2% and CT imaging by 8.3%. It also exceeded final report TAT commitments and received live communication of 99% of its critical findings in less than 40 minutes.
• A mid-west hospital eliminated $500,000 in extra fees and grew CT and MR by 6% through better service, more subspecialty and analytics to identify leakage. In addition, 98% of patients said radiology services met or exceeded their expectations and physician satisfaction scores improved 107%.
• Another hospital eliminated more than $200,000 in nighthawk, transcription and software fees and immediately improved TATs by 25-30% by partnering with Radisphere. It also grew YOY outpatient imaging by 7.9% across all modalities and 17% in MR and 5% in CT. 

Diagnostic accuracy is not only the right thing to do today, but it will be an economic imperative tomorrow. Radisphere’s delivery model enables us to do amazing things and deliver service in fundamentally different ways. We are changing the way radiology is consumed and establishing ourselves as the leader in radiology clinical outsourcing services. With the continued success of our clients, we will prove that timely and more accurate radiology can best be realized with our model.

I am excited to be working in the field of radiology at a time when Radisphere is changing the way healthcare is delivered and measured. Radisphere is raising the bar with regard to the value hospitals should expect to receive from their radiology services partner and the quality of care they can measurably deliver.