Introduction to Business for Radiology Senior Residents

Abstract

Without question, the world of edicine is much more business orinted than ever before, such that all hysicians, including radiologists, are orced to practice business concepts o which most have not been exosed. Concepts such as the proosed national health care reform, he financial impact of imaging serices, relationships with hospitals and utpatient imaging services, qualityf-care initiatives, and self-referral oncerns are commonly encountered n all practices. Unfortunately, radilogy residency training devotes little r no time to the business of radiolgy. Accordingly, residents are preared for radiology but unprepared or the business of medicine. Other pecialties have begun to include usiness training in their residency urricula, including psychiatry [1,2], family medicine [3,4], anesthesiology [5], and surgery [6-10], but this has not been adopted in radiology residencies. This lack of an introduction to business concepts in residency training is a shortcoming [11,12] that has been recognized by radiology societies [13]. In this article, we describe an introductory business course we developed for our senior radiology residents to introduce and better prepare them regarding fundamental business concepts of radiology practice.