A novel malpractice accusation: How radiologists can respond to alleged ‘lax’ image reading
Radiologists are facing a novel allegation this year in malpractice cases and will need to educate jurors about how they do their work.
That’s according to a new analysis piece published in this month’s issue of ACR Bulletin. Michael Raskin, MD, JD, specifically cited a case from January, in which attorneys extracted $2 million from Tenet Healthcare, after accusing a physician of spending too little time reading images.
The American College of Radiology does not currently have practice parameter related to minimum interpretation speed per image, and literature is scant on this topic.
“Since there is no established standard for the viewing time of an image or a series of images, this leaves the field wide open for attorneys to allege—based upon expert witness testimony—that the radiologist did not spend enough time in reading the imaging study,” wrote Raskin, a member of both the ACR and the Florida Radiological Society.
In the January case, attorneys claimed radiologist Steven Fuhr was negligent in his duties for failing to report acute subdural hematoma in a 64-year-old patient’s brain images, leading to his discharge and eventual death. “Smoking gun” evidence helped turn the case after plaintiff attorneys subpoenaed the head of radiology at the hospital and found Fuhr received nearly 700 images but spent less than 7 minutes interpreting them.
While this may seem “reckless” to some, Raskin noted that radiologists typically scan through images in “cine fashion,” similar to how one would view a movie.
“Alleging that the radiologist was lax because they did not spend enough time per image ignores the way that most radiologists actually read the scans,” he wrote. “Nevertheless, this will not stop a plaintiff’s attorney from using this against us in a court of law.”
To counter this accusation, Raskin recommended being careful when asked how much time you spend on each image. And if you typically scroll through scans in two or more planes, be prepared to explain this in a “concise and understandable manner” that the layman can understand.
“While the ‘lax radiologist’ is a novel allegation, it is one that could receive recognition and approval from jurors,” he concluded.
You can read the rest of the piece in the Bulletin below and our original coverage of the settlement here.
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.