Honestly when it's 3 am and I'm working solo in a place with no other doctors and there is a radio call for "2 month old born premature in respiratory distress" I don't always want to be the combination triage expert and resus guy anymore.
Easy. Radiology interns.
We need everyone in medicine. But as I have said in the past, DR better do something fast or AI is going to make you all go the way of CT surgery with interventional cardiology. It will be a mighty fall.
People have been saying this for years. Reality; avg age of a radiologist is over 55 w avg retirement age of 64, training spots have increased 8-10% since the early 2000s with image volumes continuing to rise. Rvu per scan gets cut yearly, but the technical fee is high, and $/rvu keeps increasing. If AI were to make it to where 1 rad can do the job of 5, there would still be a shortage. AI in rads is also very different (and much more advanced, years ahead. You think this voice recognition is cool? Rads has been using it since the early 2000s) than what the public is exposed to leading to this AI craze, which is why when you talk to a radiologist who is in the know they aren't concerned (even if you disagree)
Personally, I don’t think AI will make the job 1 rad = 5 current rads. I worry it will be AI + 1 rad = 100 current rads. But that is just my worry because that is what HCA/United Healthcare are drooling over.
I've been using voice recognition software in my notes since you were probably in middle school and I've thought it's been cool the whole time. I also still have to secure chat the radiologists occasionally when they make a transcription error that entirely changes the interpretation.
Moreso under-appreciated in the U.S., where it always seems as though there's infinite money and everyone can grab a pound of flesh as the stricken man rolls by.
If radiologists are still legally liable for the images they read, that doesn't really increase efficiency even in the setting of a decent AI. Checking images is the bulk of our work, we already have templates and voice to text that maximize efficiency for writing the report. We have pretty good versions of AI overreaders already, they're called senior residents and fellows, but attending radiologists still check every study. The only way AI becomes a threat is if a large subset of scans, or scans as a whole, are taken away from human eyes completely and the hospital/AI company takes on the liability. Too many complex studies, "edge" cases, rare pathology that doesn't have thousands of examples to train AI on, and limited/artifact-riddled studies for that to happen anytime soon.
Unlike some in this thread I don't really have a strong opinion on the subject but at least where I trained (two different institutions) it was almost exclusively residents/fellows doing reads overnight.
No because you're not cutting down the total number of scans to be read. Those scans done by the residents/fellows were prelimed for the attending to finalize in the morning anyway, it didn't cut down on anyone's work. It's just a better schedule since they don't have to come in overnight.
But night shift usually comes at a big premium right?
Not particularly, most 1 week on 2 week off jobs make around 450-500k, that guy might have had a special deal worked out or was working in rural Wyoming or something. The schedule is good but you work 60-70 hours the weeks your on and need to be okay switching your circadian rhythms, most people don't want to work deep nights.
I know a couple of neuro rads who are pretty concerned.
Aside from the part in which even the privately held radiology practices will use these and the norm will become humans signing off on AI reports with minimal review to maximize RVUs.
I was spoiled in residency with 24 hour subspecialty radiology reports...and am still spoiled post residency.
It requires you to check everything the AI says. If you're legally liable you're not blind signing anything. Ask any breast rads if there AI over the years has sped them up, if anything it slows you down now you have to check someone's work.
An autonomous robot? I mean, the DaVinci robot is controlled by someone wielding double joysticks.
1. This is assuming the hospital is taking on liability as opposed to the AI company that made the product. I don’t know why any AI CEO would care about saving money on radiologists salaries when they’re not the ones paying them, and would likely just want to continue selling products to hospitals that help but don’t replace radiologists and avoid malpractice.
I think a lot of folks here are viewing rads from an ER perspective. If an onc or GI orders a PET CT or MRCP, they are expecting a consultant-level analysis, not a "no acute cardiopulmonary abnormalities" noted on a cxr or CTA
idk how yall old guards are, but the new ER folks are terrible. The average convo with a pgy1-3 EM resident is "hey brooooo I have this dude who is one of yalls patients, ugh he has chest pain but negative trops and no ekg findings. Can you like give your blessing before I dc him?" Go down and its clear costochondritis, now the ccu team has to waste time to do an H+P
Hospital could indemnify the AI company. Hospital or rad “provider” could soak up so many suits it wouldnt matter.
I see this. It’s so bad.. some new Em residents are barely fit to be docs.. it’s embarrassing.
I mean we already have coordinators who can notify providers, that’s not any big obstacle. The problem is when the Ed doc has a question about the obvious artifact that the AI is convinced is an arterial bleed, and now has no one to talk to about it.
This is the Emergency Medicine (EM) forum. Of course we are going to view everything through that lens. You wandered over here. Don’t be surprised.
Our local rads group now has a way to put a big pop up on the chart for incidental findings. Pretty amazing.
How do you know it's Illinois? I really doubt any IL group is paying partners 1.5 million. You don't even make that much up in Alaska.
Actually, in AK you can. I can't say much more, because it's proprietary, but, there's at least one making $1mil+/yr.
The reddit poster said it somewhere in response to a question in the comments. I think it was a non-Chicago area of IL.
