ACR Members Discuss Digital Film Networks and Teleradiology
The announcement of a new Fort Lauderdale company that will contract with radiologists in Shanghai, China, for the overnight reading of films from several area hospitals has fueled the teleradiology debate in the Sunshine State, according to an April 29 article in the South Florida Business Journal.
The agreement is the result the rise in digital systems that allow "doctors to share images anywhere, from offices to laptops," the article noted. However, some radiologists are resisting the overseas option.
"Some of this data getting sent overseas; you don't know what country it's going to," noted ACR member Robert D. Burke, MD, whose five imaging centers are networked, but patients still have the opportunity to discuss their case with a radiologist. "Our system requires that you know your doctor."
Other South Florida hospital systems are also linking together to ease radiologists' workloads and allow for quicker evaluations of images.
"The fact that the image is available through the entire system allows us to have people in less-busy locations read equally large amounts of images," said ACR member Mark Schwimmer, MD, chief of radiology at Memorial Health System. "We can't even imagine reading analog films."
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