The South Dakota Association of Healthcare Organizations (SDAHO) is excited to introduce our Associate Member Spotlight Article featuring The Radiology Group. Our Associate Members are a diverse group that includes national and multi-office consulting firms, accounting and law firms, health care suppliers, associations, local firms working with community health providers and others.
Radiology Administrators in rural hospitals have plenty of challenges to keep them up at night. Patient volume is increasing, staffing is flat, communication with patients is lacking and overhead costs continue to rise.
So, rural radiology departments are faced with a decision. Should they continue to operate on what could be described as a traditional analog model, or should they embrace technology to streamline operations?
It is a matter of survival, said Dr. Anand Lalaji, Chief Executive Officer of The Radiology Group (Dr A), which combines artificial intelligence (AI) with human decision-making to modernize rural radiology practices.
Under the traditional model, rural hospitals collaborated with a local radiologist with personal ties to the community. That radiologist knew hospital staffers and many who sought their care, so communication between patients, the radiologist and the hospital was at a high. However, those glory days are slipping away as local radiologists retire.
Waiting in the wings are large Hospital and radiology consolidators with cost-cutting in mind, which means many radiology staffers could lose their jobs at any time, exacerbating the issues at hand.
“Private equity and large consolidators merge radiology practices or imaging centers,” Dr. Lalaji said. “There is another category of private equity buying distressed, rural hospitals. Once that happens, they become very aggressive in cost containment measures. Half those strategies harm the community.”
As AI progresses, rural hospitals will see it partially replace radiologists and radiology technicians, but there will be significant advances in equipment. If rural hospitals maintain the status quo in the meantime, it will take them longer to catch up later, Dr. Lalaji said.
He recommends that rural hospitals and radiology departments embrace technology now to help maintain their independence, streamline operations, and ultimately turn a profit. First, rural hospitals must treat their radiology department as a profit center that needs modernization.
“They can use AI to make radiologists more efficient and to restore revenue on the balance sheet,” Dr. Lalaji said. “If they do that, they can protect themselves against consolidators.”
The Three Cs of AI Infusion
While AI is still considered young, it can help rural hospitals improve operations and its bottom line in several ways, Dr. Lalaji said of The Radiology Group’s We Care! model.
COMMUNICATION: the Radiology group’s DocsInk platform enables HIPAA, compliant efficient messaging between clinicians and radiologists, as well as Radiology technologies and all the personnel at the hospital with the Radiology group. This has replaced calling, texting, and emailing, which are highly inefficient in today’s world.
But not all communication is administered remotely. The Radiology Group, which was named among Modern Healthcare’s Best Places to Work in 2026, visits its hospital partners at least every six months to meet with the care team to fix problems and strategize, said Dr. Lalaji.
COST CONTAINMENT AND CARE: The program’s www.Inflohealth.com feature employes AI to read the radiology report to identify suspicious findings for the clinician. AI then prompts the radiologist to the appropriate follow-up measures with the patient. With 40-60% follow-ups typically missed in the findings section of the radiology report, according to Dr. Lalaji, INFLOHEALTH has shown significant improvements in communication.
Consistency: The combination of AI and human oversight has also led to greater consistency in reading the reports and answering questions among the staff, leading to faster turnaround times. Also combining the fact that only covering rural and community hospitals makes everyone an equal priority.
“Our rapid response team monitors every communication from every hospital 24-7,” Dr. Lalaji said. “Everything is documented, so every problem can be solved easily.”
For example, the data The Radiology Group receives through its system enables the team to know where each patient is on their care journey at all times. Based on that information and the patient’s history, the algorithm identifies priorities for the radiologist to address, which include stroke, emergency, STAT, inpatient routine and routine. Its proprietary volume spike predictor can predict Spikes sent to the Radiology service before they happen with 60 minutes of lead-time for resource allocation.
Cost containment: Finally, AI can help offset the cost of modernization by flagging denial codes. Those flags are monitored by humans, who can help the hospital fight insurers who try to deny legitimate claims, he said.
“They can use those savings to reinvest in the community, the hospital and the emergency department (ED), resulting in hospital growth,” Dr. Lalaji said.
AI Aids the Workflow
The shortage of radiology technicians has been well documented, and it is hard for a rural hospital to have enough such specialists on staff every day. AI helps fill that gap.
Consider a routine Ultrasound. A medical assistant scans the abdomen, then the ultrasound machine uses AI to consolidate the images, read them and send the results to the remote tech who then approves and sends them to the remote radiologist. Having remote radiology technicians can help prevent an overload of cases being given to a hospital’s short-staffed team.
However, The Radiology Group will also monitor remote radiologists to ensure quality. For example, a radiologist with a large caseload might start reading reports too fast, which can lead to mistakes. The Radiology Group’s AI-based platform prompts the MD to slow down.
Quality still bests quantity in healthcare, Dr. Lalaji said, so his team provides guidance on how to address potential issues proactively and fix problems reactively.
The Radiology Group’s proactive quality assurance program randomly selects studies for oversight. If the case looks good and there are no problems, the team doesn’t intervene.
Planning for the Future
Rural hospital administrators face many challenges when it comes to positioning their radiology department for future success and protection from consolidators. Dr. Lalaji offers five priorities every rural hospital should keep in mind.
- Change your mentality: Understand that the market is double the cost of what it was six-to-eight years ago. Accept the shortage of radiology professionals and resist the urge to continuously look for cheap services. You will not save your way to prosperity.
- Incentivize your radiology director to grow the department.
- Take inventory: Nearly 80% of hospitals have equipment that is not being used. Determine what you can use and sell the rest.
- Employ a radiology group that is run by radiologists. Under a practice run by a private equity group, the hospital will receive less attention.
- The radiologist or the professional service must be the subject matter expert of your radiology department. It will make a significant difference in longevity and financial viability.
“The world will look very different every year in terms of what the radiologist and radiology department looks like,” Dr. Lalaji said. “It is important that hospitals stay on the frontline of that trend by including their subject matter expert in their decision-making.”
To learn more about the radiology group visit: theradiologygroup.org.
To learn more about SDAHO’s Associate Membership program, click here.
