To be honest, I heard of several radiology practices that hand the patients a normal report directly after the exam and they look at the actual images only after the patient has left.
I guess the reasoning is that they want to provide „good service“ by giving the patient something to work with directly after the exam and the workload is so high that they couldn’t look at the images so fast. And they accept the risk that some people are getting angry because their exam wasn’t normal in the end.
But on the scale a typical radiology practice operates today, the few patients who don’t have a normal exam don’t matter (the number of normal exams in an outpatient setting is quite high).
I find it highly unethical, but some radiologists are a little bit more ethically relaxed I guess.
What I want to say is that it might be more of a structural/organisational problem than incompetence by the radiologist in your case.
This is one of those comments where I started thinking "oh come on no way, this guy clearly has no idea what he's talking about" then read the last part and realization dawned the world is actually a very messy place.
I guess the reasoning is that they want to provide „good service“ by giving the patient something to work with directly after the exam and the workload is so high that they couldn’t look at the images so fast. And they accept the risk that some people are getting angry because their exam wasn’t normal in the end.
But on the scale a typical radiology practice operates today, the few patients who don’t have a normal exam don’t matter (the number of normal exams in an outpatient setting is quite high).
I find it highly unethical, but some radiologists are a little bit more ethically relaxed I guess.
What I want to say is that it might be more of a structural/organisational problem than incompetence by the radiologist in your case.
(Disclaimer: I’m a radiologist myself)