Scaling Outpatient Imaging: Lessons in Access, Workforce and Advocacy
episode
Becker’s Healthcare -- Spine and Orthopedic Podcast
16 min
4 speakers
3 chapters
transcribed 5 months ago
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hi, everyone. This is Lucas Voss with Becker's Healthcare. Thanks so much for tuning in to the Becker's Healthcare podcast series. It's great to have you. Today, we're talking about scaling outpatient care, lessons in access, workforce, and advocacy. And joining me for today's discussion are three fantastic guests. First, Paul Galloway, Chief Operating Officer at Wake Radiology. And we're also joined by Dr. Brent Townsend, President and Managing Partner also at Wake Radiology. And and a pediatric radiologist. And rounding out the conversation is Jason Weschler. He's the Vice President of Outpatient Solutions at Siemens Healthineers. Thank you all for being here today. It's so great to have you. We have a ton to discuss, so I want to hop right in to the conversation.
As we're seeing demand continuing to shift into outpatient settings, I'd love to know where you're seeing the most persistent access bottlenecks today. And again, we're talking about geography, scheduling capacity, staffing, referral process, all of these different factors, very complex. And which of those is proving hardest to solve at scale? Dr. Townsend, I'd love to start off with you.
Well, thanks, and thanks for having us here. For me, as president and managing partner, the biggest bottleneck remains the shortage of radiologists relative to the growth in the volume of work. Here at Wake Radiology, we have been fortunate enough to be able to recruit due to several advantages, practice stability, our reputation for quality, our location here in the triangle of North Carolina, good relationships with two excellent training programs in our backyard in Duke and UNC. And that recruiting success has allowed us to handle our organic growth while maintaining quality in short turnaround times. However, in order to achieve our goals of expanding even further and providing even more access to our patients, we need to be able to recruit even more.
Paul, from your perspective as Chief Operating Officer, what does this look like?
I'd say from an operational standpoint, one of our main bottlenecks has been the technologist shortage in our market. We are in one of the fastest growing areas in the country. We have several large health systems as well as other outpatient imaging providers. So we find ourselves competing for the same kind of smaller talent pool. So what we've tried to do as an organization, is focused on internal workforce development. We've been cross-training our technologists across multiple modalities. We've also been very collaborative with our local community college programs to offer student technologist positions, apprenticeships, internships, hoping to build a sustainable pipeline of some future technologists.
And while we're seeing some Incremental positive outcomes from these efforts, the demand, the volume that we're experiencing, it's been very difficult to meet the staffing challenges.
Jason, is this something that you're seeing nationwide? I'm assuming these are trends that you've heard about quite a bit and you're familiar with. But again, from where you're sitting too, what does this look like? Are these familiar trends that you're seeing?
So glad to be here. And absolutely, we are seeing these trends across the country. There's certainly some regional differences. But one of the key things we also know is that the best outcomes for patients are tied to being able to get access to these appointments in a timely manner in their communities. And I think what both Dr. Townsend and Paul have shared are representative trends.
Where are the most persistent access bottlenecks in outpatient imaging?
We're also seeing a need for technologies to help accelerate care and availability, whether it's remote scanning and emulating, I think, what Paul and the team at Wake Radiology are doing in terms of workforce development being another key theme.
Paul, again, you've touched a little bit on the operational side of this and what this looks like from where you're sitting, right? When you're looking at day-to-day operations, which is certainly crucial, when you're trying to expand access without simply adding cost, what are some of those operational or technology levers that you've seen really deliver the most meaningful results?
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Chapters
3 chaptersSpeakers
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