Two imaging trade groups will host a town hall in December to ponder the question: Should diagnostic and interventional radiologists practice separately?
Two members of the specialty recently teed up this topic in a blog post published on the American College of Radiology’s website. Both work in nonacademic practices, where both IRs and DRs work alongside one another. This arrangement may work for some physician groups, they noted; however, there certainly is no one-size-fits-all approach.
“As IR has evolved, including its transition to a primary specialty and its unique training pathway, many IRs desire to deliver comprehensive and longitudinal patient care,” Timothy Crummy, MD, and Kurt Schoppe, MD, the ACR council speaker and vice speaker, respectively, wrote Nov. 16 on the Voice of Radiology Blog. “This evolution, simultaneous with the ongoing explosion of diagnostic imaging volumes, has contributed to stress between the subspecialties. Consequently, some voices are calling for a separation of DR and IR.”
To further hash out this issue, ACR and the Society of Interventional Radiology will co-host an online forum Dec. 6 at 6:30 p.m. Central Time. There, a panel of radiologists representing various practice models will share their experiences. In a separate news update posted Friday, ACR detailed some of topics on-tap for discussion:
- Challenges around practice models as interventional radiology transitions to a primary specialty.
- Should IR separate from DR?
- Barriers IRs encounter when establishing a clinical practice, whether in independent settings or as part of a hospital.
- Collaborative work options to ensure radiologists are optimizing the provision of diagnostic exams and image-guided procedures.
- Ways in which the two radiology societies can help support physicians navigating this challenge.
“We appreciate the ACR’s and SIR’s willingness to help IRs and DRs work to develop mutually beneficial practice models,” Crummy and Schoppe wrote.
You can register for the webinar and find a list of speakers 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.