My 10-year-old daughter recently checked out a book from our local library titled smART: Use Your Eyes To Boost Your Brain. She has full intentions of using this book to better her strategies in negotiating a later bedtime or a higher allowance – but there was such a great section on radiologists that I had to share!
“Researchers at Harvard Medical School sent the following slide of human lungs to a group of radiologists and told them to look for any abnormalities: The radiologists looked, but 83 percent of them didn’t mention the gorilla dancing in the upper-right … sometimes when you’re concentrating on one thing, we miss everything else, even something as big as King Kong!” (Herman 28). Slide above.
How does this tie into teleradiology you ask? Well first – there is no way the Real Radiology team of radiologists would miss a gorilla in a lung! Seriously though, there are so many things one does not see in the teleradiology spectrum. For instance, the impact teleradiology has had on rural critical access hospitals during this nation-wide radiologist shortage. There are approximately 60,000 hospitals in the United States and half of them are in rural areas. Radiologists in rural areas are often asked to work all hours of the day, taking on-call roles after having already worked a 10–12-hour shift. Add to this the mass amount of imaging studies being done currently and this is a recipe for burnout and delay of care.
Teleradiology, specifically the services we offer at Real Radiology, have helped enhance the continuity of care in rural areas. While we do provide coverage for numerous urban large health care facilities, we find great pride in helping the small community hospitals with their coverage. In areas that do not have the luxury of a radiologist on site to those facilities that just utilize us for overnight hours – no matter the size or volume of imaging being sent our way, we are happy to help!
What else is unseen? The phenomenal behind the scenes operations team at Real Radiology that’s what! Our team of operations support staff are all seasoned MR and CT technologists with vast knowledge. They are not only knowledgeable but friendly and have great customer service – a great first line of communication when a site, rural or not, needs to speak to our team. The operations team relays messages from sites to reading radiologists and vice versa. They also accumulate prior images and reports as needed and ensure your stat exam is at the top of our reading radiologists’ list. Our operations team is on 24/7, 365 days a year, just like our team of radiologists – to ensure your needs are met at any hour of the day.
To learn more about our service coverage or our team here at Real Radiology please connect with us via our contact page!
References
Herman, A.. (2022). smART: Use Your Eyes To Boost Your Brain. Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers.