In mid-May, Athens-Limestone Hospital will offer radiology services through a company officials say will provide services 24 hours a day, seven days a week with a faster turnaround of results.

Reddy Solutions Inc. has an exclusive contract with the hospital, which means there will no longer be work available at the hospital for Dr. Joe Cannon.

Cannon has had hospital privileges at Athens-Limestone Hospital for 25 years and for much of that time has been the sole radiologist. He is not a hospital employee but rather one of many doctors who has privileges to provide services there, according to hospital chief executive officer Phil Dotson.

Cannon said he had a good relationship with doctors at the hospital.

“The people I work with at the hospital, the great majority of them are just like brothers and sisters to me,” he said.

Seven years ago, Cannon opened Valley Imaging, which is not a hospital-operated facility, to provide radiology services such as MRI, ultrasound and X-rays.

“With the time it takes him to service the radiology needs of Valley Imaging, it detracts from the time here,” Dotson said.

Cannon said despite work at Valley Imaging, he has always been available for the hospital.

“I have got to spend a lot of time at Valley Imaging, but the difference between what I can provide is I’m here seven days a week unless I’m gone to a medical conference. I can be here in five to10 minutes, period. I’m not in another state.”

For a hospital in a town the size of Athens, he said, “it has more radiology coverage than any hospital in the state.”

“Regardless of what goes on, I will be servicing this community,” he said, adding he also works with the Heart Center.

Valley Imaging and the hospital compete for radiology business in Limestone County.

Cannon said he went to the hospital board before opening it to tell board members another company had purchased land and planned to operate an MRI in eastern Limestone County.

“I was operating MRI in a mobile van because the hospital had no desire to provide this service,” Cannon said, adding he told board members, “If we don’t make a stance, somebody’s going to do it to us, but I want to do it with your graces.’

The board agreed Cannon could go ahead, he said.

“I took all of the risk myself,” said the doctor, “Not to become a competitor to the hospital but to put a fence on the east side of town to say (to Nashville, Huntsville and Birmingham), ‘We have staked to this territory, so don’t come over here.’ That’s what it’s done.”

He said he took the risk and now has to “continue to grow that operation.”

The hospital last year opened a diagnostics center in East Limestone that provides limited radiology services such as mammograms, but hospital officials expect to add services there, Dotson said. Cannon received a request for a proposal from the hospital but did not submit a proposal for providing services, he said.

Cannon said no one responded to the hospital’s initial request, and he did not receive a second request.

“When I pointed out the proposal they sent out was different from what they were accepting, I was told by the administration they had sent another proposal,” Cannon said.

Cannon said he checked with two other radiology groups and was told they also did not receive the second request.

“When I saw what they were willing to accept, I did make a proposal; I wrote a letter that was a proposal,” he said. Some hospital board members confirmed they had received his letter, he said.

Spurred by growth

Dotson said the hospital board has been considering changes in the radiology department since 2000.

“Over the last several years, the patient needs at Athens-Limestone Hospital have continued to grow,” Dotson said. “In the 2003-’06 time frame, 15 new physicians were recruited to our community and plans are to continue adding particular specialists based on community need. With the addition of the MRI and CT scanners, physicians depend more heavily on these radiology diagnostic tools when caring for their patients.”

A shortage of radiologists makes it difficult to recruit, he said.

“Radiology recruits demand salaries up to and exceeding $500,000 a year and expect anywhere from 13 to 17 weeks of vacation,” Dotson said. “They do not want to be on call often when they can join larger groups and not have to sacrifice their quality of life. These were our challenges that we were unable to overcome. With RSI, we believe that we have the best solution.”

As the sole radiologist, Cannon was responsible for hiring radiologists to assist with the workload, Dotson said.

The shortage meant Cannon was able to find radiologists who only worked on a temporary basis, Dotson said, some of whom worked for only a week or so. In the past 16 months, 19 radiologists have worked with Cannon, Dotson said.

“For us, it was an issue of continuity,” Dotson said, adding that some radiologists were trained only in certain areas. For instance, some could not do mammographies, and they also had to spend some time learning the hospital’s system. Using RSI should also reduce waiting times for emergency patients.

“One area where we have really placed a tremendous amount of focus is our emergency department, and with radiology turnaround times as stated by RSI, we expect this will assist the patient flow of emergency department patients,” he said.

Cannon said if there was a slower turnaround time during his tenure as radiologist, it was because of ongoing equipment failures.

“We were living through a system that wouldn’t work correctly to send out for almost three months,” he said. “You cannot bring in enough manpower to overcome failure of equipment.”

Working with RSI

RSI provides a radiologist to work from Athens-Limestone Hospital one or two days each week, Dotson said.

Five days each week, a radiologist physicians’ assistant will work at the hospital.

But patients will have continuous service because a group of eight RSI radiologists working in Georgia, Alabama, Utah and Tennessee read films sent by computer and get results to physicians seven days a week.

The group averages a turnaround time of only four hours, so physicians here get results to patients sooner, Dotson said.

By bidding the process and placing a company under contract, Dotson said, the hospital could require some standards be met, including the turnaround time on reading films and sending results to the patients’ doctors.

Critical reports are completed in fewer than 15 minutes, and other emergency reports in under an hour.

The doctors in the group are licensed in Alabama, Dotson said.

If a doctor at Athens-Limestone Hospital needs to discuss findings with an RSI radiologist, the two can see the same film via computer and discuss any issues.

Six companies submitted proposals that were seriously considered by the hospital Board of Directors Contract Committee, Dotson said.

“This was not an easy decision for our board and medical leaders,” he said. “It was difficult for us to have to make a change, but there was no other solution to take care of this tremendous increase in radiology services. We’re a growing community and quality healthcare services must continue to develop with this community.”