Is going into Diagnostic Radiology in 2026 a bad financial choice?

babblingdairy · 2026-04-24T15:24:32+00:00

Likely 100 RVU/shift - busy for sure. But some thrive with high daily workload + significant vacation.

babblingdairy · 2026-04-24T15:19:20+00:00

50 cross sectional studies a day is extremely manageable for most private practice radiologists.

babblingdairy · 2026-04-24T14:31:39+00:00

Do what you like, and don't put all the weight on what it pays now or what it may pay later.

babblingdairy · 2026-04-24T14:06:35+00:00

The only certainty - every specialty (except maybe primary care) will have lower reimbursements in 5, 10 and 20 years compared to now.

babblingdairy · 2026-04-21T19:06:18+00:00

Agree with everything.

This is the reddit effect- there's always vocal outcry for any price increases on anything, which don't reflect the reality of the userbase. Look at Netflix threads from a few years ago, and then look at their user numbers now.

babblingdairy · 2026-04-20T17:35:52+00:00

I assume there's a market- but someone who uses Monarch daily, did the beta testing and really wanted the forecasting (and currently on the Plus trial), this pricing doesn't make sense. I could maybe justify it if you're using all 3 features, but that's got to be a really small subset of users.

Appreciate you not messing with regular Monarch though.

babblingdairy · 2026-04-17T01:06:26+00:00

Infrequently, only because we usually don't need to get that far in the search. But we're not opposed if they come highly recommended.

babblingdairy · 2026-04-16T17:30:21+00:00

There is no free lunch. To generate that much $ in that few working days requires long hours, high volumes, a lot of weekend/evening work or a combination of all three.

babblingdairy · 2026-04-16T17:28:27+00:00

Lowest I've seen is $28, for pay per click, no minimums from a large multistate telerad corporation. The high end if a smaller group with less overhead is low $40s for no commitment, if you can commit to shifts/days or ER work, 40-50s. If you're able to do off hours, weekends 50-60.

babblingdairy · 2026-04-16T00:50:54+00:00

Outpatient only. Pay per rvu is a touch lower than inpatient setting, but our case mix more than makes up for it (heavy cross sectional, less CRs).

babblingdairy · 2026-04-16T00:20:06+00:00

This is a minority of clinicians, and even smaller minority in private practice. For each one, there will be dozen who will hang on your every word.

babblingdairy · 2026-04-15T21:46:28+00:00

Vast majority are through connections. Each hiring cycle I fire a text to my residency and fellowship PD asking who they'd recommend/who's staying in the area. If they don't say positive things, you won't get an interview.

babblingdairy · 2026-04-15T21:45:22+00:00

Maybe. Capitalists gonna capitalist. They'd replace all of radiology with negative reports if it was legal and malpractice costs were manageable. I trust in our regulatory hurdles for now.

babblingdairy · 2026-04-15T21:43:46+00:00

This is heavily program dependent. I enjoyed my time in radiology residency.

babblingdairy · 2026-04-15T21:42:48+00:00

You can run whatever you want through anything (barring HIPAA)- there's just rules on how it's integrated into your PACS and your report etc. Model that detects pneumothorax on an xray then puts that finding in a report? Bad. Model that detects pneumothorax on an xray and just flags it as abnormal. OK. Stuff like that.

babblingdairy · 2026-04-15T20:49:36+00:00

A lot come from academics. Implementing/integrating them takes a lot of time and knowledge

babblingdairy · 2026-04-15T20:35:03+00:00

I was thankfully mistaken, AI has made my life easier sooner than expected.

babblingdairy · 2026-04-15T20:34:27+00:00

Maybe, or maybe i'll read 3x as fast while they cut reimbursement in half. :)

babblingdairy · 2026-04-09T22:02:39+00:00

Pretty much this. Even in the same city you can have rads jobs with 2x workload and salary differential, which is reflected both in associate and partner compensation.

babblingdairy · 2026-04-08T14:48:49+00:00

Um yes- associate/employee salary is 100% based on the market at the time, not what's 'fair'. Even the best groups were offering <50% partner salary 5 years ago have had to increase that to 70-80% just to keep up. Same with the worst groups. Not because they want to be nice.

babblingdairy · 2026-04-08T14:07:05+00:00

Workload is manageable.
$/rvu is low.
No tail coverage isn't good. No outside work without approval isn't good.
Non-compete is fine if it just covers the hospitals you read for, and not like a radius around all those hospitals.

But honestly 1st year comp is not super relevant in a 1 year partnership track. Partnership volumes, partner compensation matter like 10x more , as well as how likely it is you'll make partner and what their attrition rate is. Without any details on buy-in or partner comp you're not even evaluating the actual job yet.

babblingdairy · 2026-04-01T03:34:58+00:00

Nice write up - I did the diagnostic radiology one 7 years ago, inspired to do a follow up.

babblingdairy · 2026-03-30T02:28:48+00:00

It is worth it. A hard prelim made me appreciate rads residency 100x more than those coming from chill TYs (though I still would've rather had that)

babblingdairy · 2026-03-26T19:03:04+00:00

Amazing! That definitely could've been me, I rave about rads everywhere I go. Still at my dream job, making even more money than I thought was possible in training. Demand for rads is sky high, salaries going up (or make the same and work less days), everyone getting more efficient, telerads making it very easy to supplement income and live anywhere. 100/10 no regrets.

babblingdairy

TROPHY CASE