Jeffrey B. Mendel, MD, former Chair of Radiology and Chief of Radiology Informatics at, respectively, Tufts-affiliated St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center in Boston and Harvard-affiliated Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, shares an anecdote.

Hurricane Harvey, one of the most devastating storms in U.S. history, hit Texas in August 2017, leaving entire neighborhoods underwater and doing billions of dollars in damage. On Friday, August 25, the storm was heading straight for the coastal city of Corpus Christi, Texas, until weather patterns shifted at the last minute.

In healthcare, as in life, relationships evolve over time. Take, for instance, Atlantic Radiology Associates (ARA) in Savannah, Ga., a 12-radiologist group serving hospitals throughout Georgia, South Carolina and Florida. ARA first started working with vRad, the country’s largest teleradiology provider, back in 2007, with vRad handling preliminary weekend and overnight reads for one of the group’s busiest hospitals.

No world-class radiology residency program ever attained its excellence without securing and sustaining department-wide buy-in on the criticality of teaching the next generation of radiologists. Clinical care and research don’t need to be de-emphasized in any way, but every faculty member in the department must be committed to teaching while sincerely appreciating the value of the residency program in ensuring the present and future health of the profession.

For small rural hospitals such as McCurtain Memorial Hospital in Idabel, Okla., an on-staff radiologist is a luxury. After losing its single in-house radiologist, the facility floated between several different teleradiology providers before finally landing on vRad—largely due to vRad’s strong breast health portfolio.

The radiology job market has had its fair share of ups and downs, as one can see by simply scanning the last 15 years of data from Merritt Hawkins, a popular physician search firm. In 2003, radiology was the No. 1 most requested search assignment at Merritt Hawkins. 

Once considered some of the most contractually stable and fiscally secure practitioners in all of U.S. medicine, radiologists are today concerned about their very future—and more than a few are right to be worried. From nosediving reimbursement to successive consolidation, from constantly expanding technologies to fitfully pinballing policymaking, the pressures have been varied and unrelenting for years now. What’s more, the pace of change is even now only accelerating. How best to rise to this moment with realistic hopes of emerging stronger than ever?

Prioritizing patient comfort and satisfaction may be a hot topic among policy makers in today’s healthcare environment, but it’s nothing new for the healthcare providers who spend most of their time working directly with them. Radiology technologists like me have always known the vital role of a positive patient experience in creating clinical value for patients. In my role supervising MRI technologists at Phoenix Children’s Hospital, I’m made aware every day of the importance of providing a calming, supportive environment for our young patients and their families.