Dear X-Ray Insider,
If your practice includes reading routine pre-employment chest x-rays for prospective employers, you may be taking on more liability than you thought.
That's the news in this month's X-Ray Insider Exclusive article, which describes a lawsuit filed against a Phoenix radiologist who spotted indications of lung cancer in a chest radiograph performed for tuberculosis screening. The radiologist reported his findings to the company that requested the read, but the "patient" never heard his findings.
Ten months later, she sued the radiologist for failing to communicate his findings to her in a timely fashion. And now the Arizona Supreme Court has ruled that, even though there was no formal doctor-patient relationship in this case, the radiologist may still be liable.
To protect themselves from lawsuits, U.S. radiologists may need to make a lot more effort to communicate findings in a variety of circumstances, says malpractice expert and radiologist Dr. Leonard Berlin. "Failure to communicate findings to patients is a very serious problem in this country," he noted. Click here to read more.
One scenario in which "findings" generally do get communicated is when radiograph readers are hired by plaintiffs' attorneys to look for evidence of asbestos exposure. But a fascinating study reported in Academic Radiology suggests that these readers-for-hire may be extremely biased toward finding something, as noted in another AuntMinnie.com article.
Please check out these stories and other recent coverage in our X-Ray Digital Community using the links below.
