Critical Mass: The Potential Role of the Mega-group to Address the Manpower Shortage and Facilitate Office-based Practice in Interventional Radiology

Abstract

THE American College of Radiology and Society of Interventional Radiology (SIR) have recognized that contemporary interventional procedures are often the primary invasive therapeutic treatment in a patient’s disease and that interventional radiologists must be accountable for patient outcomes over time (1,2). For this to take place, interventional radiologists need to perform evaluation and management services, see patients in ambulatory settings, plan and implement treatment, and then follow patients in an ambulatory setting. Of course, all this requires office-based practice, and it is recognized in interventional radiology (IR) that an office-based practice model with hospital privileges is in the best interests of patients and is the only reasonable way for interventional radiologists to compete for ambulatory, elective patients in the future (3). The traditional alignment of interventional radiologists in hospital radiology departments poses several problems. The first is that the foundation of radiology group practice is usually the hospital franchise model; that is, usu-