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U.K. May Outsource Some Patient Diagnoses Overseas
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05.28.04 (4 years ago)
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The U.K. may have to consider getting some patient diagnoses by Internet from qualified doctors in other countries to meet targets set by Prime Minister Tony Blair, said Dan Ash, president of the Royal College of Radiologists.
On a visit to a London hospital on Thursday, Blair said there will be 250,000 more diagnostic scans using magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, and computed tomography, or CT, equipment each year in Britain beginning this summer.
Ash said he didn't know how the scans would be provided because ``there's a desperate shortage'' of radiologists. While the government is training new ones, it takes seven years after qualifying as a doctor. That makes outsourcing, proposed by such companies as London-based Global Diagnostics Ltd., a possibility.
The U.K.'s health service is a central political battleground for Blair's Labour government, which faces regional and European Parliament elections on June 10. Labour argues that the opposition Conservatives want to cut 1 billion pounds ($1.8 billion) from health spending while the Conservatives say Labour is spending money without getting results.
Global Diagnostics' parent company, Imaging The South Group Pty. Ltd. of Bunbury, Western Australia
, has doctors in Australia
, New Zealand
, South Africa, Singapore, the U.S., the U.K., France and Sweden, most of them working from home. Last year, they diagnosed 135,000 cases, producing revenue of 12 million Australian dollars ($8.6 million).
``Working on-screen, dictating their notes into a computer, our doctors are three times more productive than a traditional radiologist sitting in front of a light box with a pile of films,'' Global Diagnostics Chief Executive Officer Johnny Walker said.
Mobile Labs
Global Diagnostics is one of a number of companies tendering for a contract to perform 80,000 extra MRI scans a year in the U.K. from mobile laboratories. The terms of the contract forbid companies from using staff who would otherwise be working for the state-owned National Health Service to do the work.
The company is allowed to use radiologists unwilling to work in hospitals because they are caring for children, and staff who work in the private sector. It also hopes to use staff overseas.
While Walker said he would only use overseas staff qualified to work in the U.K. and registered with the British General Medical Council, he said the issue of sending patient records overseas for analysis was a ``legal gray area.'' The company has asked the U.K. Health Department for clarification.
The Royal College of Radiologists, which oversees diagnostic scans and treatment in Britain, has investigated the issues around outsourcing radiological analyses to different parts of the country and the world, Ash said.
``Enormous benefits could result from it,'' he said. ``You can concentrate experts and transfer images from areas where there are no experts.''
``There is a patient consent issue,'' he said. ``If you went for a CT scan, would you like to know that your scan is going to be reported by somebody in Bombay?''
To contact the reporter on this story:
Robert Hutton in London on
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Catherine Hickley on
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