Rural U.S. populations often suffer poor access to healthcare services. The cracks many patients fall through are not the fault of radiology per se. However, researchers and rural radiologists agree that much imaging ground must be gained if location-based disparities are to be cut down to size.
Notwithstanding the hopes and fears around AI, medical 3D printing is the emerging technology that could help pull radiology into the realm of the indispensable. Thanks to progress toward permanent billing codes, the future of reimbursable 3D printing is taking shape.
Despite authoritative voices reassuring radiologists that artificial intelligence will never seriously cull their workforce, speculation to the contrary continues. In fact, some of the prognosticators most certain about likely job losses are radiologists themselves.
We sought out a handful of radiology executives, directors and managers who started out as radiologic technologists. They share their stories, talk about radiology’s present challenges and offer tips for today’s techs hoping to become tomorrow’s leaders.
A machine able to interpret diagnostic imaging studies better than radiologists has long been foreseen, yet its arrival comes almost as a surprise. We have underestimated the potential of AI to perform the kinds of work we do.
A funny thing happened on the way to the printer with this issue of RBJ. In an email exchange, a radiologist who’d spoken with one of our reporters let me know he had more to say on the combustible subject about which he’d been interviewed.
With radiologists increasingly compelled to compete on the basis of cost and quality metrics, the moves they make now to forge the strongest possible ties with their affiliate hospitals and healthcare systems could well determine their success or failure.
Radiology is evolving, consolidating and all the while innovating in this time of transition from volume to value across U.S. healthcare. A compressed field reflects the shape of the changed—and still changing—marketplace.
Some observers suggest that one physician’s self-reported burnout is another’s normal work fatigue. But nearly all the experts agree that such variability is no excuse for simply dismissing the phenomenon.
The average cost to replace a departing employee is six to nine months of the individual’s salary. Fortunately, there are plenty of tried, tested and even innovative ways to prevent a revolving door from spinning so fast that it blows a big hole in the bottom line.
