Turnaround Times Are Worsening
Wait times for MRI, CT and ultrasound results have doubled in recent years, driven in part by a radiologist shortage and growing demand. (phillyvoice.com) That performance hit is more than a staffing problem — it’s a throughput and workflow challenge that threatens referrals and creates openings for capacity-focused partners. (psychiatryadvisor.com)
A patient can finish a magnetic resonance imaging scan on Monday and still be waiting days later for the written report that tells the doctor what the pictures mean. A new Medicare study found imaging interpretation turnaround time rose 113% from 2014 to 2023, with the sharpest jump in 2022 and 2023. (jacr.org) The delay is not the machine taking longer to run. It is the gap between the scan being done and a radiologist reading it, matching it to the patient record, and sending the report back to the ordering clinician. (jacr.org) Computed tomography scans saw the biggest slowdown in the study, with turnaround time up 318% over the period. Magnetic resonance imaging was up 256%, ultrasound was up 140%, and standard radiography or fluoroscopy was up 68%. (usnews.com) The study looked at 2.6 million office and hospital outpatient imaging claims from a 5% sample of Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries. Average turnaround time was fairly steady from 2014 through 2021, then climbed fast in the last two years of the dataset. (neimanhpi.org) Radiologists are the physicians who read scans, and the pipeline is not keeping up with the work. The American College of Radiology said workforce shortages and rising imaging volumes were the top two pressures on the field in 2025. (acr.org) The supply problem has been building for years. A Journal of the American College of Radiology projection found the United States could have about 37,482 radiologists in 2055 under baseline assumptions, while imaging use keeps rising as the population grows older. (jacr.org, neimanhpi.org) The pain is not spread evenly. The Medicare turnaround-time study found longer delays for patients who were older, Black, or dually enrolled in Medicare and Medicaid, and for people living in lower-income or rural areas. (phillyvoice.com, jacr.org) Hospitals feel this as a workflow problem as much as a hiring problem. If reports stack up like unread lab trays, referring doctors wait longer, follow-up appointments slip, and imaging centers become less attractive places to send the next patient. (beckershospitalreview.com, neimanhpi.org) That is why health systems are looking beyond simply buying another scanner. Extra machine capacity helps only if the report can move through the reading queue, the software system, and the clinician inbox without adding another bottleneck. (acr.org, beckershospitalreview.com) The headline number is a doubling of wait time, but the deeper story is that imaging now depends on invisible back-end capacity as much as on the scanner in the room. When the reading pipeline slows, the whole referral chain slows with it. (jacr.org, neimanhpi.org)
