On our visit to Pleasanton, we met each radiologist, and Stefan Arnold, the Director of Imaging Services, to gain their perspectives on the job and what it’s like working with Stanford.
The advantage of working with Stanford at their Tri Valley location in Pleasanton is that you only cover one hospital. All the physicians we met liked that they never felt that they had to sacrifice quality by being forced to do a lot of reads. They haven’t felt like they had to stay late or come in early to get caught up. The daily workload is manageable (70-80 reads) and very well organized. You will be on Faculty at Stanford, but in a community hospital location. The only real challenge will be is you have to accept the high cost of living.
Everyone loved the infrastructure of Stanford with Power Scribe, the PACS, the EPIC EMR and there seems to be a template for everything. You click on something, and a template pops up and gives you a tour. This allows our physicians to provide detailed notes of each read they conduct. The onboarding, HR and everything just seems easier with Stanford. For questions on benefits and health insurance you just call the phone number to get your questions answered. Every one of the physicians felt like they were getting a fair deal.
Our DR1 physician starts their day with the preliminary reads from the night before. That typically is completed by 11a then moves on to the reads generated that day from scheduled reads and the ER.
Our new Radiologist will be reading (70-80 per day) 15-20 CT’s, 15-20 Ultrasounds/Dexa and 30-40 X-rays on average per day. If there is fluoroscopy, then the number might be a little lower. There is no opportunity for mammography. There are no responsibilities for pediatrics or nuclear. A physician that wants to do more than one day a month of MR, will not be a fit for our group. That one day will be done onsite at the Palo Alto campus working with the MR fellows.
The structure of our practice is set up to minimize a lot of pressure put on radiologists to do ancillary things. We have a centralized calling system so whenever somebody wants to discuss a particular case with a radiologist, they call the reading room assistants (RRA), who then contract the radiologists. The RRA lets our radiologist know who wants to discuss the study with them. If a radiologist wants to contact a patient or physician, they contract the RRA and let them know to call the patient/physician, and when they are on the line, the call gets transferred to the radiologist. Our physicians love this service as it saves them time waiting on hold. The RRA will also help set up zoom meetings and help manage your schedule.
An independent teleradiology company provides coverage from 6p-8a every day, including weekends. Weekend call is shared by our groups physicians and is 1:6 or better. We have a per diem radiologist, Dr. Singh, who picks up every other weekend of call coverage. Weekend call is taken from 8a-6p on Saturday and Sunday. Expect to read between 100-120 images on each weekend day. When on weekend call, the radiologist first reads any backlog from overnight since the Nighthawk services just does a preliminary read. That read is preloaded, but our radiologist has to construct the full report and sign off. The rest of the day they take care of the reads from the ER.