Serious Challenges of Teleradiology

In order to gain cost and time benefits, increasingly, Teleradiology is becoming more popular across the globe. Teleradiology increases efficiencies of cost and time, however, there are some obvious challenges posed by teleradiology. 

Control over Teleradiology practice

Quality control in reporting cases is a big hurdle that needs to be undertaken before committing to serious telereporting via Tele-radiology.  There are 3 level of challenges for seekers of Tele-radiology.
A. Radiologist Credentials 
B. Platform Resource Preparedness 
C. Right Cost

A. Radiologist Credentials
There is opinion that you can not control the quality of the reports coming from Tele-radiology practice as you can not control level of skills of tele-radiologists. Following issues bring in fear in the minds of the tele-reporting seekers.
1.  Due to virtual working place, it is difficult to ascertain the qualifications and skills of reporting radiologist who are termed as Tele-radiologist now.
2. Difficulty in finding the dynamic ratings of  these radiologist who come on a call.
3. How do we get the reports done by Tele-radiologist reviewed further, it is a pain

B. Platform Resource Preparedness
To know resource level preparedness of any tele-reporting platform l, its still a challenge. Folloing few questions are good to ask from the platform

1. Difficulty in finding feedback of existing Tele-reporting platforms. There is no third party agency to do that.
2. Do the platform has access to workable PACS or Diacom Viewer ? Do they have right licenses for software.
3. Do they provide choice of radiologists or people resources to begin telereporting using Tele-radiology practice?

C. Right Cost
There are cost level confusions for teleradiology service seekers. Following issues are definitively to be addressed
1. How much transparency is observed by the telereporting platforms practicing Tele-radiology? How much they earn or pay to fellow Tele-radiologist?
2. How much platforms spend on Training and resource capability?
3. How much platform spends on quality review of the reports?

Even tertiary hospitals and organizations are pursuing options to enhance the standard of Tele-reporting via Tele-radiology practice. As the practice evolves there will be more thinking.  Most players in healthcare are looking for innovations and evolved thinking to answer side-effects of Tele-radiology. There is a different quality assessment model coming up due to the intervention of Tele-radiology Leader; TeleradiologyHub. It is beings discussed by fellow radiologists in this article.