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Growing Number Of Hospitals Outsourcing Radiology Services

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - Employment has suffered as low-skill jobs have been outsourced, but medicine always seemed like a safe field; that may not be the case for long. Many hospitals are contracting out radiology services.

Breakthroughs in digital technology have allowed hospitals to transmit x-rays anywhere: from another floor of the hospital to half-way around the world, leading to the creation of companies -- like Nighthawk Pros in Royersford -- that read x-rays remotely.

Founder Dr. Maheep Goyal says it relieves hospitals of the need to have a radiologist on site, through the night, to read the few x-rays that might come in through the emergency room. "Your doctor then can sleep through the night and be fully functional the next day. It's much more efficient."

Goyal says off-site radiology services like his are proliferating and some are migrating off-shore, "A lot of them are overseas, because they take advantage of the time zone differences." Abington Hospital, for example, uses a company in Israel for overnight reading. The doctors in these companies have to be U.S. trained and certified, so Goyal says the quality is consistent.

"We're not a commodity, we're a specialty. We're all very highly trained," says Dr. David Levin, chairman emeritus of Thomas Jefferson University Hospital's radiology department.

The problem, according to Dr. Levin, is that the use of these companies is expanding, "These companies are starting to try to oust radiologists from their hospital contracts, so they've gotten to be in some ways a threat to the profession."

Dr. Levin says radiologists are more than mere x-ray readers and need to be on site. But the trend is toward more contracting out and other specialties, such as pathology, may go the same way.

Dr. Vijay Rao, chairman of Thomas Jefferson's radiology department says the companies have expanded to the point where some hospitals are forgetting that radiologists play a major role in overall patient care, "That whole spectrum is diluted by this business of teleradiology, where the radiologists are sitting in a computer room in front of a monitor, spitting out reports and just becoming image readers."

Dr. Rao says tele-medicine has many advantages-- it allows the sharing of expertise and is being used in areas such as pathology, cardiology and intensive care-- but there's a danger if it's overused and all specialties should fight to preserve their role in patient care.

Reported by Pat Loeb, KYW Newsradio 1060

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