AstraRad delivers STAT CT interpretations with a median turnaround of 28 minutes, against a contractual SLA of under 1 hour, met 99.4% of the time over the trailing 12 months. Every STAT CT is a signed final report from a board-certified, fellowship-trained subspecialist, not a preliminary read that gets redone in the morning. Coverage is 24/7/365 across 12 time zones, billing is per report with no minimums, and you can send DICOM from your PACS or upload through the portal without an integration project.
Those three numbers, 28 minutes, under 1 hour, 99.4%, are defined, dated, and audited on our SLA page. We publish them because most of the teleradiology market does not: turnaround claims in this niche routinely contradict themselves from one page of a vendor's site to the next, or appear as a heading with no number underneath. When a stroke protocol is on the scanner, "fast" is not a number. 28 minutes is.
Published STAT CT turnaround times
Every emergency CT scenario below routes to the same STAT tier and the same measured clock: it starts when the complete study arrives and stops when the signed final report is delivered.
| Emergency CT scenario | Typical study types | Priority tier | Contractual SLA | Median delivery |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Suspected stroke, head CT and CTA | CT single, CT special | STAT | Under 1 hour | 28 minutes |
| Polytrauma pan-scan | CT double abdomen and pelvis, CT single | STAT | Under 1 hour | 28 minutes |
| Suspected pulmonary embolism | CT special (CTPA protocol) | STAT | Under 1 hour | 28 minutes |
| Acute abdomen | CT double abdomen and pelvis | STAT | Under 1 hour | 28 minutes |
| Coronary CTA, acute chest pain | Coronary CTA | STAT | Under 1 hour | 28 minutes |
Studies that are urgent but not emergent can run on the Urgent tier, under 4 hours, and everything else on Routine, under 24 hours. You choose the tier per study; the full tier definitions and measurement rules are public. For the broader picture of how sub-hour reporting changes ED workflow, see STAT reads under 30 minutes.
Subspecialty-matched CT reads, around the clock
A STAT CT is not read by whoever happens to be on shift. It is routed to the subspecialist whose fellowship matches the clinical question:
- Neuroradiology for stroke protocols, head trauma, and spine CT
- Chest radiology for PE studies and acute thoracic findings
- Body imaging for acute abdomen and CT abdomen and pelvis
- Cardiac imaging for coronary CTA
- ER radiology for polytrauma pan-scans that cross body regions
- Pediatric radiology for children, where dose context and normal variants differ
The panel is 240 board-certified, fellowship-trained subspecialists distributed across 12 time zones, so a 3 a.m. stroke CT in Ohio is a mid-morning read for a neuroradiologist elsewhere on the panel. That is the structural reason we can keep a 28-minute median without night-shift fatigue: it is always daytime for someone qualified to read your study. If you are evaluating overnight coverage specifically, our nighthawk radiology page covers that model in depth.
How the STAT workflow works
From scanner to signed report, the path is short by design.
- Send the study. Push DICOM directly from your PACS or drag the study into the secure portal. There is no integration project, no VPN procurement cycle, no go-live date. Transfers are encrypted and the platform is HIPAA and GDPR compliant and DICOM conformant.
- Flag it STAT. Priority is set per study, by you. The STAT clock starts when the complete study lands.
- Automatic routing. The study goes to an available subspecialist matched to the body part and clinical question, with prior imaging and clinical history attached.
- Interpretation and sign-off. The radiologist reads, dictates, and signs the final report. There is no preliminary step; the distinction matters, and we explain why in STAT vs preliminary vs final reads.
- Critical findings called in. Findings that change immediate management are communicated directly to the ordering physician, and the call is documented in the report.
- Report delivered. The signed report returns via HL7, FHIR, or the portal, inside the SLA window, with a median of 28 minutes.
How we measure the 28 minutes and the 99.4%
Numbers only mean something if the measurement rules are fixed and public. Ours are.
- The clock is edge to edge. Turnaround runs from receipt of the last image of the complete study to delivery of the signed final report. Not "assigned to a radiologist," not "preliminary impression available."
- The median is the trailing 12 months of STAT volume, not a marketing-week sample. At 600,000 reads per year across all tiers and modalities, the sample is large enough that the number is stable.
- SLA compliance is 99.4% trailing 12 months, measured per study against the tier the client selected. Misses are counted as misses; there is no exclusion window for volume spikes.
- Quality is audited independently. 1 in 20 reports is independently double-read by a second subspecialist, and our major discrepancy rate is under 0.3%. Speed that costs accuracy is not speed worth buying.
We maintain headroom for 25,000 additional studies per month, which is why STAT performance holds when a client's ED has a bad night or a new facility onboards mid-quarter. An 8,000-study backlog clears in under 30 days without touching STAT queues.
When you compare vendors, ask three questions of every turnaround claim: where does the clock start, is the delivered report preliminary or final, and over what period and volume is the number measured. A 20-minute claim that starts at radiologist assignment, ends at a preliminary impression, and is sampled from a quiet week is not comparable to an edge-to-edge median over 12 months of production volume. Any vendor unwilling to answer those three questions in writing is telling you the answer.
Per-report pricing with no monthly minimums
STAT CT coverage is priced the way the rest of AstraRad is priced: per report. No minimums, no subscriptions, no platform fees, no annual commitment to hit a discount tier. STAT priority applies a multiplier that is printed on the rate card, so the cost of an emergency read is known before the study is sent, not discovered on the invoice.
Send one study a month or ten thousand; the unit economics are the same and the SLA is the same. Industry pricing surveys put emergency CT interpretations across a wide range depending on contract minimums and after-hours premiums, and our teleradiology cost guide walks through those industry-typical ranges and the contract terms that move them. For AstraRad's own numbers, request a rate card through the contact page; it arrives within one business day, and the pricing page explains the per-report model in full.
Beyond CT
The same STAT tier, panel, and SLA apply across every modality we read: CR X-ray, mammography, ultrasound, CT in all its forms including coronary CTA, MRI including cardiac and advanced protocols, nuclear medicine gamma studies, and PET-CT. If your emergency volume includes MR stroke protocols or ultrasound for acute presentations, they ride the same sub-hour lane as your CTs.
If your facility needs sub-hour final reads on emergency CT, the fastest way to evaluate us is to send a study. Contact us for a rate card and portal access, and measure our clock against your own.