Does teleradiology increase malpractice liability for radiologists?

Medical malpractice cases involving teleradiology tend to be more severe and result in higher indemnity payments than other radiology malpractice claims, according to research published April 2 in Radiology. In a retrospective review of medical malpractice claims over a 12-year period, researchers from Harvard Medical School led by Adam Schaffer, MD, found that teleradiology claims were more likely to involve patient death, as well as indemnity payments (and higher amounts). The teleradiology cases also more frequently involved interprovider communication problems. “These attributes of teleradiology claims underscore their impact within the medicolegal and patient safety landscape,” the authors wrote. In an effort to assess the characteristics of teleradiology and nonteleradiology radiology malpractice claims, the researchers used Candelo -- a national database of medical malpractice claims – to gather data on claims between January 2010 and March 2022 in which telemedicine was coded as one of the contributing factors. They manually reviewed each of these claims to identify teleradiology cases. Next, they compared those cases with nonteleradiology cases that had closed during the same period of time in which radiology was deemed to be the primary responsible clinical service, according to the researchers. There were 3,474 radiology malpractice cases and 135 teleradiology cases during the period. .tg {border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:0;} .tg td{border-color...
Source: AuntMinnie.com Headlines - Category: Radiology Authors: Tags: Enterprise Imaging Malpractice Source Type: news