Going by the numbers, radiology is tops in Medicare patient service

No specialty in medicine serves more Medicare beneficiaries than radiology—and this distinction opens all sorts of opportunities to “engage patients and better brand the specialty.”

That’s according to the authors of a paper presented this week at the annual meeting of the American College of Radiology in Washington, DC.

Kristina Hoque, MD, PhD, of the University of Southern California and colleagues from ACR’s Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute arrived at their findings by identifying all physicians who provided services to Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries in 2013.

Extracting beneficiary counts per provider and comparing all identifiable specialties—of which there were 56—the team found that diagnostic radiologists served, on average, 3,150 ± 2,344 beneficiaries.

Cardiologists came in second with 2,511 ± 2,000 beneficiaries served.

Also of note, interventional radiologists ranked eighth and nuke-med docs 16th.

In their discussion, the authors note that their aggregated datasets don’t allow for figuring out how many patient-case interactions included patient-radiologist communications.

“However,” they point out, “this study does demonstrate the tremendous opportunities and potential impact of developing mechanisms for radiologists to increase their direct communication with patients.”

Hoque et al. also note that radiology is “all too often thought of as a non-patient facing profession. It is critical not to lose sight of the integral role radiologists play in properly orchestrating patient care.”

Click here to view their slides (PDF).