MRI teleradiology reporting by subspecialists

MRI teleradiology means your study is read and signed by a fellowship-trained subspecialist in the anatomy you scanned. Which subspecialist depends on the study: brain and spine go to neuroradiology, joints to musculoskeletal radiology, abdomen and pelvis to body imaging, cardiac to cardiac imaging. When the report lands depends on the tier you set at submission: routine MRI in under 24 hours, urgent in under 4 hours, STAT in under 1 hour. Every report is final, signed as the interpretation of record by a radiologist licensed in the state where your patients are located, and billed per report with no minimums and no subscription.

Anatomy decides who reads your MRI

MRI rewards the reader who sees the same anatomy every day. A lumbar spine study asks different questions than a postoperative knee, and both ask different questions than a liver study with an indeterminate arterial-phase lesion. The sequences, the artifacts, and the normal variants that imitate disease on one protocol and vanish on the next all differ. A radiologist who reads spine MRI through a full shift, every shift, has built an eye for the conus lesion sitting at the edge of the field of view. That eye comes from volume in one anatomy over years of it, and it fades when the same reader spends most of the week on chest CT and prostate MRI.

This is why the panel is assembled out of fellowships: board-certified radiologists, each reading inside the training they completed and the caseload they have kept up since. Your knee MRI reaches a musculoskeletal radiologist. Your brain MRI reaches a neuroradiologist. That holds at 3 a.m. as firmly as at 3 p.m.

You never tag a study or name a reader: each arrives carrying modality, body part, and clinical indication, and lands on the worklist of the panel trained to read it. Overnight hours are staffed as their own scheduled shift, at full subspecialty depth, so a 2 a.m. cervical spine reaches a neuroradiologist who is mid-shift and reading at full attention.

Choose the tier when you submit the study

MRI turnaround is set per study by the tier you choose at submission: STAT in under 1 hour, urgent in under 4 hours, routine in under 24 hours, and that tier is what we are measured against. STAT covers cord compression, cauda equina, and acute stroke-protocol MRI. Urgent fits same-day surgical planning, inpatient MRI, and expedited oncology staging. Routine carries the outpatient MSK, spine, body, and breast volume.

Over the trailing 12 months, 99.4% of reports came back inside the tier they were submitted under, and median STAT turnaround was 30 minutes, measured from the arrival of the last image of the study to the radiologist signing the final report. How the clock starts, what happens on a miss, and how the monthly figures are compiled are set out on the service level agreement page. Acute CT volume runs on the identical tiers and the identical clock, described on STAT CT reads.

MRI teleradiology reports come back final and signed

Every MRI report here is final and signed: the interpretation of record, not a draft for someone else to confirm. The service comes in two shapes, and both end in a signature.

Final reads. The subspecialist signs the interpretation of record, licensed in the state where your patients are located, which is the test 42 CFR 482.22 sets for a distant-site physician whose reads reach a hospital's patients, and the report moves straight into the chart and the billing workflow with no local co-signature.

Overreads and second opinions. A formal re-interpretation of an MRI that already carries a report: oncology patients transferring care, complex spine before surgery, quality programs that sample outside work. The prior report and the comparison imaging sit in front of the reader, and what comes back is a complete signed report.

Preliminary reads are absent from that list on purpose. Elsewhere in the market, a wet read is an unsigned draft your own group must re-read and finalize the next morning. Two physicians then produce one billable report. The Medicare Claims Processing Manual, Chapter 13 pays the professional component to the physician who performs the interpretation, and an interpretation only counts as one once it includes a written report prepared for the patient's medical record. AstraRad does not issue preliminaries on any modality: a subspecialty interpretation loses most of its value once a generalist signs over the top of it, so every report leaves the panel final.

Teleradiology is the wrong tool for work that needs a radiologist physically at the scanner, such as arthrogram injections, sedation supervision, or protocol changes decided at the console; keep that work in the building. If credentialing or billing turns on the report distinction, STAT vs preliminary vs final reads covers the operational and reimbursement mechanics.

One in twenty reports is read a second time

We pull 1 in 20 signed reports into an independent double-read by a second subspecialist in the same anatomy, blinded to the first interpretation. Major discrepancies run under 0.3% of signed reports, and every one is reviewed at the monthly discrepancy meeting and closed with the reader who signed it.

Report structure is fixed by study type. A lumbar spine report addresses each level, a prostate MRI carries a PI-RADS assessment, a liver study carries LI-RADS where it applies, and cardiac MRI reports quantified function and viability. Critical findings, cord compression being the MRI example every clinician knows, go by phone to your designated contact, and the call is documented in the report with the time and the person reached, which is the documentation the ACR Practice Parameter for Communication of Diagnostic Imaging Findings describes for nonroutine communications.

Transport is DICOM conformant and built to the HIPAA Security Rule safeguard categories, with study transfer encrypted against the transmission security standard at 45 CFR 164.312, and signed reports returned over HL7 or FHIR into your RIS or EHR.

What does an MRI teleradiology read cost?

Pricing is per report. No minimums, no subscription, no platform fee, and the priority multiplier for STAT and urgent tiers is printed on the rate card where you can read it before you send anything.

Rates differ by study class, since single-part, advanced, and cardiac MRI consume different amounts of subspecialist reading time. Industry-typical published teleradiology rates put MRI above CT and plain film for the same reason, and per-study fees across the market swing widely with contract structure; those are market figures, not AstraRad's. Volume and case mix move the number enough that a public list price would mislead you, so ours goes in writing when you request a volume quote.

Our teleradiology cost guide sets per-report pricing against salaried coverage and subscription platforms, and our pricing model is set out end to end.

Clearing an MRI backlog takes headroom

Clearing an MRI backlog takes spare reading capacity: the panel carries headroom for 25,000 additional studies a month, and a backlog of 8,000 studies clears in under 30 days at standard routine pricing. Backlogs build quietly. A scanner running extended hours, a radiologist out on leave, a new orthopedic group referring in, and routine MRI turnaround slips from one day to four while your referrers start to notice. Coverage is scheduled 24/7/365, so a Saturday night stroke-protocol MRI gets the same neuroradiologist-level read as a Tuesday morning one.

Overflow. Your radiologists keep their normal worklist, and MRI above the threshold you set routes to the panel. Overflow radiology reads shows how groups structure that threshold.

Subspecialty gap coverage. Your general coverage stays in house, and the MSK or neuro MRI you have no fellowship for comes to us.

Nights, weekends, and holidays. Your own radiologists sleep through the hours the panel is scheduled to cover.

Full MRI outsourcing. Every study from an imaging center or a mobile fleet, read final, billed per report.

Volume scales up for a backlog month and back down afterward without renegotiation, and none of these arrangements require exclusivity.

Send a batch and read the reports

If you have a PACS, your DICOM comes to us directly. If you do not, portal upload works on day one, with no integration project, no software license, and no onboarding fee. Send a pilot batch across the anatomies that give your group the most trouble, ask us for a rate card, and put the reports in front of the physicians who have to act on them. Ten reports tell you more about MRI teleradiology than any page describing it. MRI is one of four service lines; our service lines page covers the rest of the modality mix.