Teleradiology Company’s Online Second Opinion Service Gets Notice

USARAD.com may have tapped into an under-appreciated market need judging by local media reaction to its recently launched website that lets patients pay directly for a second opinion on their radiology reports and images. WPLG-TV, the ABC affiliate in Miami, Fla, devoted a segment to the new SecondOpinions.com service (watch below), and the South Florida Sun Sentinel, a Tribune newspaper, wrote an article about it. USARAD.com is based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla, as is Michael Yuz, MD, MBA Founder and CEO of SecondOpinions.com. The services include second opinion reports on MRI, CT, ultrasound, X-ray, mammography and nuclear radiology studies and range in price from $80 to $200. (For the launch, these have been discounted to $29 to $99.) Although the individual report fees are low, the revenue is immediate as patients must pay with a credit card at the time they ask for the second opinion report. Patients also do the work of obtaining the images and reports from their current doctor and sending them to USARAD.com’s second opinion service, either by uploading directly to the website or sending by mail. (For mail, there is a $30 additional charge that jumps to $50 if the patient wants the materials returned.) Another possible advantage for USARAD.com is that, if the service is successful, it could provide a second revenue stream that is not affected by contracts with hospitals, burdensome payor policies and the administrative burdens of traditional medical billing and collections.Watch the WPLG-TV segment: