Surveying the Landscape


“Eventually, I sent out requests on social media for anyone who would be willing to help us. They were kind enough to help, and I think they also realized that the community would suffer without the support.” —Vivek Padha, MD, FSIR


find anyone to replace their previous DR group.


“Eventually, I sent out requests on social media for anyone who would be willing to help us,” Dr. Padha said. Through this, he connected with radiologists at other West Virginia DR groups, who agreed to read remotely.


“They were kind enough to help, and I think they also realized that the community would suffer without the support,” Dr. Padha said.


With these agreements, the hospital now had coverage for emergency reads—but there are still many services that require an in-hospital presence, which now fell to Dr. Padha.


“When a five-person group shares responsibilities, you don’t realize how many administrative tasks there are,” he said. “But when you’re the only one left, you have to cover all the meetings and fulfill all the regulations.”


To comply with the hospital’s regulatory requirements, Dr. Padha served as the system’s radiation safety officer. He also had to maintain a Mammography Quality Standards Act (MQSA) certification to read mammography— which required completing over 20 hours of CME work.


“This was my hospital, so I had to take ownership,” he said. “I’ve learned in the army that sometimes you just have to step up and do your best.”


24 IRQ | FALL 2025


At this time, Dr. Padha was covering the two hospitals within the Eastern West Virginia healthcare system, as well as the local Veterans Affairs hospital. As a result, he was providing all the IR/DR call for three hospitals while maintaining his IR service line at WVU.


24/7, 365 Over the previous 10 years, Dr. Padha had established a strong IR clinical practice, providing consults as well as interventions for everything from biopsies and drainages to peripheral arterial disease and interventional oncology. In addition, his system regularly hosted students rotating in from West Virginia medical schools.


“I was very busy,” he said. “I was averaging 20 plus cases a day and had to make myself available 24/7, 365.”


Even with support from other radiology groups, the patient volume required a regular in-person presence, Dr. Padha said. If the internet went down, for example, someone had to be on site to read trauma cases. And hospital staff needed someone they could turn to with questions.


“You want to be available to relay with a surgeon if needed,” he said. “And if a technologist has a question about a scan, they would seek me out, because they didn’t know any of the radiologists who were reading.”


At times, even an on-site presence wasn’t enough: Dr. Padha needed someone with more specialized imaging knowledge such as high-level MR details or neuroradiology expertise.


“I don’t think remote radiology is the perfect solution for patient care,” he said. “Teleradiology is vital but it cannot replace good radiologists who are on site.”


Fortunately, Dr. Padha said, his hospital and colleagues understood the challenges, as well as the value that the IR service line brought to the community.


“I have nothing but good things to say about our hospital administration and colleagues from other specialties,” he said. “They were very encouraging and understood there were times I could not be there. But they knew that if I said


we couldn’t do something, there was a very good reason why. But in general, we never really said no. If I could get up, get in my car and go provide care to a patient, I would.”


Innovative recruiting Even with support from his hospital and other West Virginia radiology groups, Dr. Padha knew that serving as the only on-site radiologist in a three-hospital system wouldn’t be sustainable in the long term. Since they had been unable to recruit another physician, they had to get creative.


“I wanted to bring on board a nurse practitioner (NP) and a physician assistant (PA) to help,” he said.


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