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Does your hospital “allow” you to read outside studies?
Mostly pertaining to true PP hospital-based groups, does your admins have any issues with your group reading for an outside imaging center, not owned by said hospital?
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10 Replies
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Academic here-
Chair must be notified and approve. Can’t use system issued hardware or software to do so.
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No problem with our hospital but needs to be approved by the group.
We are very busy and short-staffed with lots of internal moonlighting opportunities. Nobody is really interested in working anywhere else.-
Assuming you dont mean overreads, You would most likely have to pay at least nominal market rate to rent space for the time you read outside studies, and it would almost certainly have to be on separate software.
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truely varies I think. Our admin is fairly hands off and doesnt really care if we do outside work on site as long as we dont use their hardware.
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You mean as an individual or as in the group covering an outside facility while physically in the hospital ?
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Both as individual and as a group while in the hospital. They understand no one is gonna provide the service we do and are generally happy with our work.
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As a group, we rent a reading room in the hospital which holds the workstations for our outside clients. The rent is pegged to the per sf rent for class A office space in the community (+ a utility fee). We have our own internet.
This has mostly tax and compliance reasons. The hospital as a non-profit cannot allow it’s assets to be used by a for-profit to do business not related to the mission of the hospital. We also have a group member on the hospital board which would raise an inurement issue. Relative to the overall business we do with the hospital, the space rent is pocket lint.
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Oh, and while we have a working relationship with the hospital on this, I know of two cases where reading outside studies and using hospital resources to benefit a radiologist owned imaging center ended up being a major conflict (in one case causing termination of a long standing contract).
This is a bigger issue if you are reading for a facility in the same market and the hospital may think that the patients that go to the center are ‘theirs’. It’s less of an issue if you cover facilities (hospitals or idtfs) that don’t directly compete.
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We read outside exams at our main hospital on our own hardware and software. Pay fair market rent for space. Never has been a problem. None of the other sites we read for compete directly. Often patients end up at main hospital for biopsy, treatment etc. As far as inurement issue. I am on the hospital board, we pay rent. So issue is takin care of.
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Bottom line is I think fw makes very good and valid points.
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