The Radiology Experience

The relationship between hospital based providers and their overseers, the hospital administrators can be a stormy one.

I wonder however if any of the physicians in these hospital based groups have ever read a book on customer service or actually experienced the shortcomings of their departments and the level of service and quality they provide.

It amazes me that radiologists can ignore a ringing phone or do their utter best to avoid helping a clinician with the short-sighted view that they are too busy, not realizing that referrals from that same clinician are the lifeblood of the practive.

The flip side is that service flow and the patient customer experience is largely based on the infrastructure designed and serviced by the hospital and radiology managers/supervisors and administrators.

Perhaps the two shall never meet.  I laugh however when I get inane recommendations from a vice-president that maybe we should try something when they have no experience running a radiology department.

This leads me to the conclusion that perhaps the hospital should outsource the entire department to an outside vendor for a fixed cost, collect outpatient technical component, offload personnel, equipment maintenance and just provide the space, power and infrastructure.

I would not be surprised if  Imaging Company X with the full complement of tech staffing, IT experts, radiologists and administrators could revolutionize the whole experience and radically shape it into a faster more responsive customer-centric organization where the radiologists / providers and the administrators are strongly aligned.

Just a thought

The Rise of RadNet

Sounds like an interesting title for a terminator movie.  The radiology professional services market is undergoing tectonic shifts in outpatient and hospital based radiology departments.  The rise of large telerad providers such as vRad and RadNet serve to commoditize the actual service of professional interpretation of films.

The obvious scales of economy and 24-7 coverage and lack of geographic constraints have created a power struggle between independent groups and the national providers.  vRad has concentrated its efforts on taking market-share at the hospital provider level and changing from a nighthawk only model to daytime and nighttime reads.  Ultimately vRad will take its place but not be able to sustain a relatively good growth rate to reward shareholders.  It should be a private company.

RadNet however has over a 100 outpatient imaging centers in its footprint as well as a strong hospital professional business.  Their strategy will be superior.  RadNet in certain places such as Maryland now has the lion's share of outpatient imaging.  Since insurance contracts are generally a state-level negotiation. RadNet will be able to leverage their market size and negotiate better rates.  This sounds like possible anti-trust litigation potential, but does create the more viable revenue stream and a better business model than vRad.

The rise of large corporations only serves to divert professional revenues from the doctors to private parties and shareholders.  It may be time that independent groups retain their sovereignty but invest in back office/shared infrastructure type agreeements to achieve the same economies afforded by the big players..... or just join them.