Are errors more common as scanners multiply?
As more doctors rush out to get CT scans and other imaging equipment for their offices, the specialists who have traditionally made their careers out of finding the fractures, tumors, and other ailments revealed by these machines have two words: slow down. Physicians who are not radiologists now perform half the X-rays, ultrasounds, MRIs, and other medical imaging done outside of hospitals and a quarter of the imaging in hospitals, as well. But studies have shown they make more errors than radiologists and order more unnecessary images, increasing the risk of mistaken diagnoses and needless exposure to hazards such as radiation from X-rays and CT scans, or computerized tomography imaging. Radiologists say that too many nonradiologists expand into medical imaging for profit, rather than improving care for the patient, getting by on limited training and secondhand equipment that hospitals once shipped overseas. As a result, officials at the American College of Radiology are hoping that s
