Diagnostic Imaging: The Challenges of Expanding Teleradiology During COVID-19
Whitney J. Palmer from Diagnostic Imaging recently spoke to Collaborative Imaging’s CEO, Dhruv Chopra about the challenges of expanding teleradiology during Covid-19 pandemic. You can watch the video interview here.
Diagnostic Imaging: Thank you for joining me today to talk about COVID-19 and the expansion of teleradiology. I appreciate your taking the time to talk with us about this important topic for providers. To jump right in, given that we are talking about this need for expanding teleradiology, with a background of CMS recently relaxing the rules and regulations around telehealth, is this something that you feel like is going to facilitate the expansion of teleradiology in a significant way?
Dhruv Chopra: I think it’s kind of interesting, because I was probably the most excited when I saw that. For any groups to get licensed in a different state, it takes forever. We were trying to get physicians licensed in Pennsylvania today, and they require you to go through all sorts of tests, all sorts of exams. It’s a very long drawn out process. The same is true in Texas. The issue that I think we’re going to run into is just because you have physicians licensed now in different states that doesn’t mean they’re going to get reimbursed for what they do. Reimbursement is a completely separate phenomenon. So, you have the commercial carriers that are going to say these are out-of-network docs or these docs don’t have contracts with us.