Global Radiology

[Fed]

At least 4-5 years. One Saturday night, my wife got hit in the noggin by a store mannequin in '02, and she needed a head CT. About 2 h after the CT, she got the results (she was fine). The turnover was so fast because her films were sent to docs in Australia -with a time difference of 15 hours-for evaluation. The hospital apparently doesn't have radiologists on call on weekends, especially in the evening.

[Mom]

I learned something at lunch the other day, radiology has turned global and many of the tests we take are read by radiology centers around the world. The biggest center is in India another is Israel. Apparently this is wide spread. Major hospitals and small hospitals in the US use this technology, some to save money, others for convenience. "The radiologist goes home at 5:00 and doesn't work on weekends. We send these images to New Zealand, they are 12 hours ahead of us, we have the reports on our desk the next morning." So, this may be one of the reasons why some of us are able to get our results almost on the spot and others have a wait. Apparently, this is not something new and has been going on for years. Dianne