Teleradiology-Future lies in more liberal ACR guidelines

This is what the new issue of NEJM has to say about teleradiology. I know there would be varied views about how stringent the ACR guidelines should be about outsourcing but just one practical question how many Radiologists will you find-Board certified and living out of USA. Answer is-very limited.

"Imagine two patients arriving in the emergency department of a Maine hospital at midnight. The first has a presentation consistent with pulmonary embolism; the second, appendicitis. A decade ago, the first patient might have been started on heparin therapy and scheduled for an early-morning ventilation–perfusion scan. The second patient would have been seen by a surgeon, who would have made a judgment call regarding the diagnosis of appendicitis and the need for surgery. Today, both of these patients and hundreds of others like them would receive middle-of-the-night CT scans, taxing the hospital's radiologists. But midnight in Bangor, Maine, is 10:30 a.m. in Bangalore, India. There — and in Switzerland, Australia, and Israel — sit teams of radiologists ready to read the scans and fax their findings back to the United States (urgent findings are phoned back).

The technical and logistic hurdles of remote teleradiology have been overcome, and the practice of having radiologists who were trained and credentialed in the United States read films overseas is now largely accepted. If the ACR guidelines hold, the growth of overseas teleradiology will be markedly constrained by the limited supply of U.S.-trained radiologists who are willing to work abroad. It seems likely that battles over licensure, credentialing, and reimbursement will determine whether providers who were trained and credentialed overseas will be allowed to compete openly with U.S. radiologists. The outcome of these battles will strongly influence the diffusion of international outsourcing to other areas of U.S. medicine. "

Full Article Here-
NEJM Volume 354:662-663, February 16, 2006, Number 7