One partner gives notice. The hospital contract does not flex.
Private radiology groups hold service commitments sized for a roster they no longer have. This page is for the group president deciding whether to backfill, to hand the contract back, or to put a subspecialist panel behind their own name and keep it.
Each of those four is defined and dated on the SLA and quality page, and repeated with a citable anchor per figure on the facts page.
The contract was sized for a roster you no longer have.
A group rarely loses a contract on quality. It loses one on the month it could not staff, which is a different problem with a different fix.
Recruiting is slower than the gap
A partner gives notice and the search runs months, not weeks. In between, the group covers with overtime, with locums at a fixed daily cost, or by narrowing what it will read.
Nights and vacation are what makes partners leave
Call burden is the first thing a recruit asks about and the first thing that pushes a partner out. The people who stay absorb the schedule the person who left used to hold, which is how one departure becomes two.
The contract now asks for subspecialties by name
Hospitals ask for neuro, breast, cardiac and pediatric coverage explicitly. A general group either declines those studies, or reads outside its depth and carries that decision.
What a group sends, and on which clock
Groups usually start with the hours nobody wants and the studies nobody on the roster is fellowship-trained for. You keep the daytime work, the client relationship and the contract.
- Overnight, weekend and holiday call
- Neuro, breast, cardiac, pediatric and MSK subspecialty studies
- Vacation, parental leave and notice-period backfill
- Peak-hour overflow when the day list runs long
- STAT and urgent studies during a staffing gap
- Backlog clearance after a short-staffed month
Credentialing at your sites, under your contract
We read behind you. That arrangement only works if the paperwork and the signature line are both unambiguous, so both are set out before anything goes live.
The group stays the hospital’s contracting party
Your agreement with the facility does not move and your name stays on it. What changes is who is available at 3am and which subspecialties you can commit to in the next renewal.
Our readers get credentialed at your facilities
The same packet any locum submits: state licence, board certification, individual NPI, certificate of professional liability insurance and privileging profile. Where the facility’s bylaws allow credentialing by proxy, that packet gets considerably shorter.
Nobody signs under a partner’s name
The radiologist who reads the study signs it under their own name, credentials and state licence. We will not put a report out under a name that did not read it, and you would not want a supplier of yours doing it either.
A final report, signed by our reader and not by your partner.
The report leaves your reading room with our reader’s name on it. That is a disclosure decision worth making deliberately, and it is the reason the signature block matters more here than anywhere else.
A final read, so no partner re-reads it in the morning
The interpretation is final and signed. It does not need an in-house overread before the study can be closed, which is the difference between buying one read and buying part of one.
Our reader signs it, and no partner name stands in
The reading radiologist's name, credentials and state licence are on the report, frozen at signature time. There is no anonymous pool signature and no group byline standing in for a person.
Delivered through the PACS and interfaces you already run
Signed reports return to your PACS and into your RIS and EMR over the standard HL7 result interface, with a PDF copy anywhere else you want one. Nothing installs on your side and no clinician learns a new viewer.
Critical findings phoned by the radiologist who found them
A suspected critical finding is phoned to your team within minutes of sign-off and recorded on the report with the time and the person it was given to, so the callback is evidenced rather than remembered.
Who bills when our reader signs behind your group
Billing is set in your agreement rather than on this page, because it depends on how your professional billing runs today. What is true of every report either way: it is a final signed interpretation, and it carries the reading radiologist's full name, credentials and the state licence they read under, so the report is chart-ready as it arrives. Tell us how you bill now and the arrangement goes in writing before you sign anything.
Ten business days, or the date your cover has to start.
The plan is fixed and the owners are named on both sides, because a group calling for coverage usually has a date it has to be ready by.
Credentialing at your facilities
Reader files go to each facility’s medical staff office, by proxy where the bylaws provide for it. Scope is agreed study type by study type.
Routing from your PACS
DICOM routing is configured from the group’s PACS, test studies run in both directions, and HL7 results are verified before any live work.
Cover starts on the agreed date
Coverage begins on the agreed date. Volume can ramp study type by study type rather than switching over in one night.
First signed report within 10 business days of countersignature.
Liability behind your name, data under your agreements, licensure at your sites.
Liability, when the signer is not one of your partners
The radiologist who reads the study signs it under their own name and is the physician of record for that interpretation, and every reader on the panel carries professional liability insurance. Credential files are available during procurement so your risk officer can see who is reading before you sign.
Who reads, and who signsData handling under the agreements you already hold
A signed business associate agreement is a precondition of service. Studies are encrypted in transit and at rest, access is scoped by role and by facility, and every state change on a study lands in an append-only audit log.
Compliance and data handlingState licensure at every facility you cover
The panel holds licences in all 50 states, and a study is routed only to a radiologist licensed in the state where it was acquired. Every read happens inside the United States.
How state licensure worksFour pages worth reading before the partner meeting.
- Weekend and holiday coverageThe blocks a short roster feels first, and how they get covered without overtime.
- In-house against outsourced, with the arithmeticFixed cost against variable cost, counted over a real month rather than a headline rate.
- How to choose a teleradiology partnerThe questions to ask, including the ones most vendors will not answer in writing.
- The market, company by companyWhat each provider publishes about turnaround, pricing and quality, sourced to their own pages.
If this is not the right page, the same five questions are answered for a hospital and for an outpatient imaging center, each with the failure mode and the credentialing route for that kind of site. Everything AstraRad publishes about itself, including what it does not hold and does not publish, is on the facts page, and the escalation channels behind the coverage are on the support page.
Put a panel behind your roster.
Tell us which hours and which subspecialties you need covered, and the volume behind them. A per-report rate card with turnaround tiers and SLA terms in writing lands within one business day.
24/7/365 coverage. Every read happens inside the United States.