ACR and ASRT development of the radiologist assistant: concept, roles, and responsibilities

Tomorrow’s radiologist: what future?

“…Similar experiments are also underway in some North American universities [10]. The trend is undoubtedly alarming as regards what could happen in Italy where the law has given the head radiographer management responsibilities and set up degree courses for radiographers.…”

“…For the sake of brevity, I refer you to a previous article of mine [12] Un altro recente articolo ha riportato che l'accuratezza del tecnico nel refertare esami urografici ha raggiunto il 92% messo a confronto con un esperto uroradiologo [9]. Tale iniziativa è in atto anche in alcune Università degli Stati Uniti [10]. Non c'è dubbio che il fenomeno è allarmante per quanto potrebbe succedere nel nostro Paese dove la legge ha responsabilizzato il capotecnico nella gestione del reparto e ha attivato i corsi di laurea per tecnici.…”

The Impact of Nonphysician Providers on Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology Practices: Regulatory, Billing, and Compliance Perspectives

“…This precludes collection of objective national data from administrative claims files on services they may render. A recent literature search regarding RAs revealed only a limited number of reports; the vast majority of these are commentaries or review articles addressing training programs and compliance issues [2,10,37,38,[42][43][44][45][46][47][48]. For these reasons, the frequency, types, and outcomes of services being rendered by RAs are largely unknown.…”

Thyroid Biopsy Specialists: A Quality Initiative to Reduce Wait Times and Improve Adequacy Rates

“…In our institution, we had already experienced success in training radiologist assistants (nurse practitioners and medical radiation technologists) to insert peripherally inserted central catheters independently, resulting in improved access to and consistency of care for our patients. In fact, the role of the radiologist assistant has been present in North America since the 1960s (9), with the American College of Radiology and the American Society of Radiologic Technologists releasing a joint policy statement in 2003 to delineate the role (10). The purpose of this project was to develop and implement a program where selected sonographers would be trained to perform thyroid biopsies independently under the supervision of a radiologist, with the goal of improving efficiency and quality of service to our patients.…”