A good STAT radiology read arrives in under 60 minutes by contract and well under that in practice. AstraRad's median STAT turnaround is 28 minutes, measured from image receipt to signed final report, against published SLA tiers of STAT under 1 hour, Urgent under 4 hours, and Routine under 24 hours. Over the trailing 12 months, 99.4% of our reports met their contracted tier, across 600,000 reads per year signed by 240 board-certified, fellowship-trained subspecialists.
This page does two things. First, it lays out what turnaround time actually looks like across the US teleradiology market in 2026, so you can benchmark any vendor. Second, it publishes AstraRad's own numbers next to those benchmarks, with the exact methodology behind them, so you can hold us to the same standard.
2026 radiology turnaround time benchmarks: STAT, urgent, routine
Turnaround expectations have tightened over the past decade, but the contractual standards have settled into a fairly consistent shape across the industry:
| Priority | Typical industry contractual standard | What leading providers claim | Clinical context |
|---|---|---|---|
| STAT / emergent | 30 to 60 minutes | Sub-30 and sub-20 minute averages appear in marketing copy | ED trauma, suspected PE, acute abdomen |
| Stroke protocol | Often carved out separately | Dedicated stroke workflows target single-digit minutes to first notification | Time-to-needle decisions |
| Urgent | 2 to 4 hours | 1 to 2 hours | Inpatient and urgent care follow-up |
| Routine | 24 hours | Same day to 24 hours | Outpatient imaging, screening follow-up |
Three caveats make this table more useful than most vendor claims.
First, these are contractual ceilings, not typical performance. A provider with a 60-minute STAT contract may deliver a 25-minute median, or may routinely brush the limit. The contract number and the measured number are different questions; ask both.
Second, marketing averages and contractual guarantees frequently disagree, sometimes on the same vendor's own website. It is common in this market to find a homepage claiming a 20-minute average STAT turnaround while the same company's services page quotes 30 to 60 minutes for hospital ER cases. When a vendor's numbers contradict each other, neither number is audited.
Third, stroke is its own category. Facilities running acute stroke programs typically negotiate a dedicated protocol with direct radiologist notification rather than relying on the general STAT tier. If stroke coverage matters to you, benchmark it separately from ordinary STAT volume.
AstraRad's published SLA tiers
Our tiers are the same for every client, printed on the rate card, and backed by a timestamped audit trail on every study:
| Tier | Contractual turnaround | Measured performance |
|---|---|---|
| STAT | Under 1 hour | 28-minute median, image receipt to signed final report |
| Urgent | Under 4 hours | Covered by the same 99.4% trailing 12-month compliance figure |
| Routine | Under 24 hours | Covered by the same 99.4% trailing 12-month compliance figure |
Every tier delivers a final signed report, including overnight. There is no preliminary-read step that forces your day team to re-read studies in the morning; if you are comparing that model, the differences are covered in STAT vs preliminary vs final reads.
Priority carries a multiplier that is printed on the rate card, so the cost of a STAT read is knowable before you send it. Pricing is per report, with no minimums, no subscriptions, and no platform fees; the structure is on our pricing page, and we return a full rate card within one business day through contact.
The canonical, dated source for all of these figures is our SLA page. If a number here ever disagrees with that page, the SLA page wins.
How we measure: median, and receipt to signed report
Two definitions carry all the weight in any turnaround claim, and most vendors publish neither.
The clock starts at image receipt. Turnaround is measured from the moment the complete study lands on our platform, whether it arrives as DICOM from your PACS or through portal upload. It is not measured from radiologist assignment, from report start, or from any internal milestone that flatters the number. It is also not measured from acquisition at your scanner; transmission time from your site to ours is real, but it is not something a reading provider can honestly claim to control, so we state our boundary explicitly rather than blur it.
The clock stops at the signed final report. Not at a preliminary impression, not at report draft, not at first notification. Signed, final, delivered.
We report the median, not the average. A mean can be dragged down by a large volume of trivial studies or trimmed by excluding "outliers." The median tells you what the middle STAT study actually experienced: half of our STAT reads are signed in under 28 minutes, half take longer, and the contractual ceiling of 1 hour bounds the tail. Compliance is then reported separately, as the percentage of all reports meeting their tier: 99.4% over the trailing 12 months.
When you evaluate any provider, ask for these three things in writing: the start event, the stop event, and whether the figure is a median or an average. A vendor who answers precisely is measuring; a vendor who answers vaguely is marketing. Our full evaluation checklist is in how to choose a teleradiology company.
Critical results communication and documentation
A fast signed report is necessary but not sufficient for emergent findings. When a reading radiologist identifies a critical or unexpected urgent finding, the workflow is:
- The finding is flagged at the point of interpretation, before sign-off.
- The referring clinician or designated contact at your facility is notified directly, per the escalation path defined during onboarding.
- The communication is documented in the report itself: who was notified, when, and by what channel.
- The signed final report follows within the study's SLA tier, carrying the same timestamped audit trail as every other study.
This matters for accreditation and for malpractice exposure alike: an undocumented phone call did not happen, as far as a reviewer is concerned. Because every AstraRad study carries receipt, assignment, and signature timestamps, critical results documentation is a byproduct of the normal workflow rather than a separate compliance exercise.
Quality control runs alongside speed. One in every 20 reports is independently double-read, and our major discrepancy rate is under 0.3%. A 28-minute median would be worthless if it came at the cost of accuracy; we publish both numbers so you never have to take the trade on faith.
Why vague turnaround claims should disqualify a vendor
"Industry-leading turnaround times" is the most common phrase on teleradiology websites and the least informative. Some established providers publish a Turnaround Times section with no numbers in it at all. Treat that as a finding, not an oversight: a company that measures its performance publishes it, because the number is a sales asset. A company that does not publish either is not measuring, or is measuring something it would rather not show you.
A practical disqualification checklist for turnaround claims:
- No number at all. "Fast," "rapid," and "industry-leading" are not commitments.
- A number with no definition. 20 minutes from what to what? Average or median? STAT only, or all studies?
- Numbers that conflict across the vendor's own pages. Contradiction means no audit trail.
- A marketing average with no contractual tier behind it. If the SLA in the contract says 60 minutes, the contract number is the real one.
- No trailing compliance figure. A median without a compliance percentage hides the tail, and the tail is where your 2 a.m. trauma case lives.
AstraRad's answers to that checklist: 28-minute median STAT, receipt to signed final report, median not average, contractual tiers of STAT under 1 hour, Urgent under 4 hours, Routine under 24 hours, and 99.4% compliance trailing 12 months, all dated and maintained on the SLA page.
Where sub-30-minute STAT reads fit your operation
Fast STAT capacity is not only an emergency department concern. The common deployment patterns we see:
- ED and trauma coverage, where STAT CT reads carry most of the volume: head CT, CT angiography, double abdomen and pelvis studies.
- Overnight coverage, replacing or supplementing an on-call rotation with subspecialist final reads; see the nighthawk radiology model in detail.
- Overflow and surge, where your own radiologists keep the routine list and STAT-eligible studies route to us only when your queue backs up.
Coverage runs 24/7/365 across 12 time zones, with current headroom for 25,000 additional studies per month, so a STAT sent on a holiday night meets the same tier as one sent on a Tuesday morning. Study types span CR X-ray, ultrasound, mammography, CT including coronary CTA, MRI including cardiac, nuclear medicine, and PET-CT, with subspecialty-matched routing across neuro, MSK, body, cardiac, breast, pediatric, chest, ER, oncologic, and nuclear imaging.
Getting started does not require an integration project. Send DICOM from your PACS or upload through the portal, encrypted end to end, HIPAA and GDPR compliant, with HL7/FHIR report delivery when you want it. Send one study or your entire backlog. Request a rate card and you will have modality-level pricing, including the printed STAT multiplier, within one business day.