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.
Medicare recently relaxed its rules on the supervision that non-physician radiology providers must have by radiologists for their respective practices to get reimbursed. In the wake of the change, these “midlevel providers” are likely to grow in importance as well as in numbers.
Who wouldn’t want greater consistency in radiology reports’ substance, style and actionability to referring clinicians? And yet a substantial number of radiologists have intently avoided, quietly thwarted or tacitly rejected structured reporting. They can only hold out so long.
In 2017, some 60 percent of physicians reported being “not at all familiar” or “slightly familiar” with MACRA. A meager 8 percent said they were “very familiar” with the legislation. Two years later, anecdotal evidence strongly suggests the lack of understanding persists.
The unassailable understanding that the best way to stop Alzheimer’s disease is to diagnose it early gives radiology a strategically pivotal role now that drug companies are balking over reseahing and developing treatments.
