When your radiologists cannot keep up with plain film and ultrasound volume, AstraRad absorbs the overflow. US board-certified, fellowship-trained radiologists read your X-rays and ultrasounds as final signed reports, with routine turnaround under 24 hours, Urgent in under 4 hours, and STAT at a median of 28 minutes. Pricing is per report with no minimums, no subscriptions, and no platform fees, so a slow week costs you nothing.
Overflow and backlog reads without adding headcount
Plain film and ultrasound are the volume that quietly buries a radiology operation. Individually the studies are quick reads. In aggregate, a busy imaging center or urgent care network produces hundreds of them a day, and they are the first thing to slide when your radiologists are tied up on CT and MRI or when someone takes vacation.
AstraRad works as a pressure valve on that volume. Route what your team cannot reach today, whether that is everything after 3 pm, all weekend plain film, every ultrasound from two of your five sites, or a one-time backlog that has been building for months. You decide what to send and when, study by study. There is no committed block of hours and no coverage schedule to negotiate.
The capacity behind that is real, not aspirational. We read 600,000 studies a year across a panel of 240 subspecialists working 24/7/365 across 12 time zones, and we maintain headroom for 25,000 additional studies a month. If you arrive with a standing backlog, an 8,000-study queue clears in under 30 days while your new daily volume stays current.
Every read comes back as a final signed report. Your radiologists do not re-read our work the next morning, and your referrers get one report, not a preliminary followed by an addendum. For quality control, 1 in 20 reports is independently double-read, and our major discrepancy rate runs under 0.3 percent.
If overflow is a chronic condition rather than an occasional spike, the broader operating model is covered in overflow radiology reads, including how groups split volume between in-house readers and an outside panel.
US-based radiologists, licensed where your patients are
Search for X-ray reading services and much of what you find is offshore business-process outsourcing: anonymous readers, unclear credentials, and reports your billing team cannot use. That model fails a basic test. For a US patient, the interpreting radiologist generally must hold a license in the state where the patient is located, and payers expect the signing physician to be credentialed and identifiable.
AstraRad is built for that standard. Every study is read by a board-certified, fellowship-trained radiologist licensed in the state where your patients are located. Reports carry the signing radiologist's identity and credentials, which is what your billing, credentialing, and medical staff processes require. How this works state by state, including interstate licensure through the IMLC, is covered on our licensing page.
Subspecialty depth matters even on routine volume. A pediatric wrist series, a thyroid ultrasound with an indeterminate nodule, and a chest film on an oncology patient are all routine studies until they are not. Our panel spans neuro, MSK, body, cardiac, breast, pediatric, chest, ER, oncologic, and nuclear imaging, and studies route to readers whose training matches the exam.
For a fuller comparison of the staffing options, including locums and hiring, see in-house vs outsourced radiology.
Volume economics: per-report pricing at plain film price points
Plain film economics only work if the reading fee stays proportional to the study. Across the industry, outsourced X-ray interpretations typically price in the low double digits per study, with ultrasound modestly higher. Those are industry-typical figures, not our rates. AstraRad's pricing is quoted on your rate card, per study type, with the priority multiplier printed on the card so an Urgent or STAT read never produces a surprise invoice.
The structure is the point:
- Per-report billing. You pay for each read, nothing else.
- No minimums. Send one study a month or ten thousand. A quiet month costs nothing.
- No subscriptions or platform fees. No retainer, no seat licenses, no connection charges.
- Printed priority multiplier. STAT and Urgent pricing is a published multiplier on the base rate, not a negotiation.
That structure is what makes overflow reading viable for small imaging centers and urgent care groups that cannot commit to a volume floor, and it is why per-report pricing usually beats both a part-time hire and a block-hours teleradiology contract for spiky plain film volume. The math is worked through in our teleradiology cost guide, and current structure details are on the pricing page. Request your rate card through contact and it arrives within one business day.
Turnaround tiers for routine, urgent, and STAT plain film and ultrasound
Every study you send carries one of three service tiers. You set the tier when you send the study, and the same tiers apply to X-ray and ultrasound as to cross-sectional imaging.
| Tier | Turnaround commitment | Typical overflow use |
|---|---|---|
| STAT | Under 1 hour, median 28 minutes | Urgent care chest film with suspected pneumothorax, ultrasound with suspected torsion or ectopic |
| Urgent | Under 4 hours | Same-visit results, post-reduction films, follow-ups a clinician is waiting on |
| Routine | Under 24 hours | Standard overflow, screening follow-up, backlog clearance |
These are contractual service levels, not averages we hope to hit. Our SLA compliance over the trailing 12 months is 99.4 percent, and the full definitions, measurement method, and remedies are published on the SLA page.
Because coverage runs 24/7/365, the tiers hold at 2 am on a holiday weekend exactly as they do on a Tuesday morning. An urgent care group that closes at 9 pm can send its end-of-day plain film and have signed reports waiting before the first patient arrives the next day.
How onboarding and PACS integration works
There is no integration project. AstraRad accepts DICOM directly from your PACS or through secure portal upload, so most sites go live in days, not months.
- Request a rate card. Tell us your modalities and rough volume through contact. The rate card arrives within one business day.
- Connect. Point a DICOM destination from your PACS at AstraRad, or use portal upload if you would rather start without touching PACS at all. Transfers are encrypted end to end.
- Send a pilot batch. Most sites start with a bounded slice, such as one week of overflow ultrasound, to validate report quality, formatting, and turnaround against the SLA.
- Scale on your terms. Add sites, modalities, and hours as needed. Reports deliver back over HL7 or FHIR into your RIS or EHR, or through the portal.
The platform is HIPAA and GDPR compliant and DICOM conformant, and report delivery over HL7/FHIR means results land in the workflow your clinicians already use. Beyond plain film and ultrasound, the same pipeline covers CT, MRI, mammography, nuclear medicine, and PET-CT, so overflow coverage can grow into full after-hours or subspecialty coverage without a second vendor.
If X-ray and ultrasound volume is the bottleneck in your operation, send us the overflow. Request a rate card and have per-study pricing in hand within one business day.