Outsourced radiology: will doctors be deskilled?
Amy Davis, editorial registrar
adavis@bmj.com
Outsourcing of radiology has boomed in recent years as hospitals struggle to keep up with the increased demand for imaging, but how well does it work? Amy Davis reports
The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.
The technology available to radiologists has changed dramatically over the past decade. The internet, affordable high performance computers, the wide adoption of digital imaging, and picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) have propelled radiology into the digital era. These changes mean that imaging and interpretation are no longer confined to the one site—an image taken in a UK hospital can be viewed almost immediately somewhere else.
Remote assessment has become embedded in the United States. Even back in 1999, a survey of US radiologists found that 75% of radiology practices with more than one radiologist and 30% of practices with only one radiologist did their on-call work from outside the hospital, using teleradiology.1
Although this technology has undoubted benefits for clinicians and patients, the digital revolution has directly led to and accelerated the outsourcing of images
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1 comment:
I don't think that is going to pull through. I mean getting outsourced work for those kind of field could have a bad effect but if it were to go through, one thing that I will surely be looking at are those people who have updated radiologic technology continuing education credits.
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