Duty of Care: Should Radiologists Share Results with Patients?
It keeps getting colder outside, but things were heating up in the session “Malpractice Issues in Radiology” this morning. Speakers Leonard Berlin, MD, Harley Hammerman, MD, and Richard Taxin, MD, didn’t hesitate to stir up a bit of controversy in addressing the issue of whether radiologists should communicate the results of all outpatient studies directly to their patients. Berlin got things started with a recent overview of legal cases involving radiologists charged with “failure to communicate.”
Long story short, there have been several precedents for radiologists being held accountable for a failure to communicate findings. Most
