This led to an alarming discovery: vascular and interventional radiology, recognized by the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) as a primary specialty, was excluded from designation for excellence in vascular care. The only specialty included for this category was vascular surgery. The metrics reviewed were only relevant to a primarily inpatient vascular surgery practice. Other specialists had their own categories, and only IR was entirely excluded from this process. This only added to my growing realization that IR is often the object of suppression and discrimination.
As practitioners know, many potential referring practices no longer rely on referral pads or business cards. They simply go online to their organization’s menu of preferred providers and select the specialist via an electronic referral. I was shocked to learn that, in my state, provider information for those
HI-IQTM update ADVERTORIAL
practicing VIR is suppressed from these provider directories. Unless an individual provider finds someone in the insurer’s IT department to toggle a switch from “suppressed” to “unsuppressed” or, more often, takes the time to file an appeal through the insurer’s escalation department, their personal practice information will not be published.
If you are excluded from these listings, how will patients or fellow providers know that your practice even exists, other than by word of mouth? A specialty that is intentionally suppressed from view and has no industry mechanism to be recognized for excellence in patient care will have obvious difficulties demonstrating its value. Ultimately there is only one result: decreased patient and provider access to VIR services.
After several months of on and off again discussions with a restricted
network leadership group, I sent a retrospective evaluation of outcomes data for 38 thousand patients my center had seen throughout 2017. This type of data demonstrated my organization’s commitment to cost-effective care with optimized outcomes and opened the door to preferred provided status. The end result was a success: patients will now be referred to those with a proven record of optimizing care, thus increasing access to quality VIR care.
Suppressing services and being denied access to referrals and patients is an ongoing challenge facing many practicing IRs, but it is one that can be overcome. The key is to be prepared, persistent and armed with excellent patient care—and continued dedication to promoting the value and rights of IRs within a complicated and sometimes unfair system.
By Scott McLafferty, DO
Training the first generation of IRs in Nigeria
R
AD-AID International, a registered 501c3 nonprofit, is supporting the growth of interventional radiology in
Nigeria. Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa with over 200 million people, but there are only a handful of practicing IRs in the country. There are no training programs in existence today. RAD-AID International aims to train 4,000 IRs over the next decade in Nigeria. This is a monumental task that will require strong partnerships with forward-thinking specialized platforms such as HI-IQ.
In order to properly train the first generation of IRs in Nigeria, comprehensive quality improvement initiatives are essential. HI-IQ allows us to maximize our resources and provides efficiency analyses specifically designed to address the needs of IR. We will be able to track cases remotely to monitor the growth and training of Nigeria’s IRs. Equally important, HI-IQ also allows for the logging of complications. All of these items are needed if we are to build transparent training programs that can flourish over the long term.
Once HI-IQ is adopted, the opportunities for research are limitless. IR research in Africa is at its nascent stage. Using HI-IQ’s resources, Nigerians will be trailblazers not only in the clinical setting but also academically. HI-IQ’s database will be the backbone for the analysis of IR-related acute and chronic illnesses in Africa. This is a unique opportunity
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that will pay dividends for generations to come.
Our inaugural IR training program is at University College Hospital (UCH) in Ibadan, Nigeria. UCH has a long prestigious tradition of medical training. In 2019, our partnership with Ambra Health and Google resulted in the donation of a cloud-based picture archiving and communication system (PACS) at UCH. HI-IQ has generously agreed to donate its software to UCH so they can begin logging data. With these tools in place, we significantly improve our capability to support UCH remotely. We are passionate to succeed in this space and with partners like HI-IQ we are more confident than ever that we can achieve our goals.
Disclaimer: Please note that SIR is not responsible for any products or services offered by ConexSys, including HI-IQ. Nor is SIR responsible for any guarantees offered by ConexSys. Any concerns or questions about HI-IQ should be directed to ConexSys at (866) 604-4447.
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