Choosing a Teleradiology Company

Define your imaging needs – Why are you looking for a Teleradiology solution?

The advantage of using a teleradiology service is that is can be scaled to your particular imaging needs. The fact is, more electronic images are being produced that ever before and the trend looks set to continue well into the future. If you’re operating a small mobile imaging service you may need a full-time partner. A hospital may only need a backup for overflow cases or night reads. Determining your workflow is key to picking the right Teleradiology service.

Will you only send out orthopedic images for reads or mammo, pediatric, and more? Defining the scope of your practice will help you narrow your list of potential providers.

Perhaps you are currently using a teleradiology service and are unhapy with the turn-around time or the service you receive. Here at Teleradiology-Finder.com we have pre-screened the teleradiology groups we deal with. We ensure they meet the highest standards both technically and from a customer service perspective. We continually monitor to ensure that all our referrals receive the highest level of service they deserve.

Ensure there is room to grow

You want to be sure that the teleradiology group you select can grow and expand as your read volume increases. The ability of the telerad group to scale its services as you move from 200 reads a year to 2,000 or 20,000 reads a year is important to your business model.

The practice that exists for you today may look completely different 5 or 10 years from now. You want to make sure your Teleradiology services can grow with you over time, and not just in giant leaps. Sometimes you’ll only want to make baby-steps. Ask them if they can grow at your pace, not the other way around.

Finding a provider for subspecialty reads can help extend the business opportunities for an imaging practice. Subspecialty services put everything from mammography to virtual colonography to cardiac imaging on the table, adding value to potential patients and adding cash to your practice.

Report Quality

This is one of the most important aspects of your relationship with a teleradiology company. The report that is created for each image is the report that you and your clients are going to read. Often times fast turn around time leads to low quality reports. Radiologists play an extremely important role in the health of patients. Patients deserve a well read image and a high quality report.

You also want to ensure that you and your clients will be able to readily contact the radiologist who performed the read for follow-up review and clarification if needed.

There are some basics to reporting on imaging reads that are universal. Some things, however, are highly personal. Making sure that the teleradiology group is reporting in the same manner as your in-house staff is critical to a successful integration.

Teleradiology Service Setup

How much say-so do you need or want in setting up your teleradiology service? A major provider can essentially plug and play. But a smaller teleradiology provider may be better able to customize a service for your specific needs and budget.

Turn around time

What turn around time do you need and expect? In many cases, though not all, fast turn around time is crucial in order to help satisfy your clients. Some teleradiology companies will tell you that they can deliver the turn around time you expect and pay for but often fall short. Fast turn around time can help open up more opportunities for you as your clients will be much more satisfied. Whether you need 24 hour turn around time or stat reads in less than 20 minutes you can be assured that the groups we have selected to work with can deliver.

Here at Teleradiology Finder we've helped take the guesswork out of choosing the best teleradiology solution for your needs. We ask the questions you want answered from the teleradiology groups we deal with. How responsive are they to customers' needs? What is their technical support like? What is the quality of their reporting?

Teleradiology Technology

Imaging technology is constantly changing and improving with teleradiology playing an increasingly important role in radiology today. State of the art technology ensures that the quality of the images you are taking is delivered to your teleradiology group and stored at the highest possible quality.

Whether you are a mobile imaging company, hospital, or imaging center, you have invested large amounts of capital in imaging equipment. You should be assured that the teleradiology equipment is delivering the quality that you, your patients, and your clients deserve.

Making sure your technical capabilities and demands mesh with those offered by a particular Teleradiology provider is critical. Your internal needs will vary greatly, too, if a single location is sending images or if it’s a medical or hospital group that will be generating images from several locations.

Does the teleradiology group offer you a PACS system at no additional charge? A PACS system allows for the distribution and storage of teleradiology images. Reports are commonly faxed or emailed to the ordering physician. Technology now allows for images and reports to be accessed over the web via a secure web login. You and your clients are able to access all of the images and reports for all of your patients anywhere in the world. PACS systems are very expensive to purchase and maintain. The teleradiology groups that we work with provide state of the art PACS systems at no additional charge. Submit your free teleradiology quote for more information.

Billing

Healthcare billing has become a very difficult and time consuming part of the imaging business. There are many different ways to handle billing. Did you know your teleradiology group can handle the billing for you? A good teleradiology group can handle the billing for you and deliver billing options that fit your needs. Eliminate the stress and headaches of dealing with billing. Let your teleradiology group handle it all for you. Submit your free teleradiology quote and find out more about billing options available to you.

Radiologist Training

How thoroughly trained are the radiologists that you are using for your teleradiology needs? Did they graduate from a top university medical school? Are they fellowship trained? Are they board certified? Just because a physician is licensed does not mean they are thoroughly trained to handle the teleradiology needs that you have.

Many radiologists go on to complete a fellowship after their residency training. Radiologists will typically complete a fellowship to help increase their knowledge of the radiology subspecialties.

American Board of Radiology
Becoming board certified by the American Board of Medical Specialties is a voluntary process. To become board certified physicians must take a rigorous written exam and an oral exam. To remain board certified physicians must be periodically recertified.

There are also many sub specialty board certifications for Radiology. The American Board offers certification for the following sub specialties: Diagnostic Radiology, Radiation Oncology, Neuroradiology, Nuclear Medicine, Pediatric Radiology, Vascular Radiology, Interventional Radiology.

How well trained are the physicians reading your images? Here at Teleradiology Finder we thoroughly examine the teleradiology groups that we work to help ensure high quality reads and reports for you.

Teleradiology Group Location

One of the benefits of Teleradiology is that a reader can do his or her job from anywhere in the world. That’s also one of the detriments. While credentialing has become less of an issue over the last couple of years there are still specific requirements in many states for remote readers. And for some practices, there's just a level of comfort that comes from knowing whether the radiologist is stateside or in another hemisphere. There’s no right answer. But you do want to be comfortable with your decision, so ask about the credentialing, training, continuing education requirements, and whereabouts of a company's readers.

What’s the cost of using a teleradiology service?

This is likely the first question you will want to ask, but it’s not the most important. All Teleradiology companies are not created equally. Consider the many other topics suggested here. Determine what your needs are and what your budget limits are. The more information you gather before asking price will help both you and the provider create a more realistic estimate. Competitive pricing options are available - submit your free teleradiology quote to find out more.