When a patient in Altoona, Pa., needs an emergency brain scanin the middle of the night, a doctor in Bangalore, India, isasked to interpret the results. Spurred by a shortage of U.S.radiologists and an exploding demand for more sophisticatedscans to diagnose scores of ailments, doctors at Altoona Hospitaland dozens of other American hospitals are finding that offshoreoutsourcing works even in medicine. . . . Most of the doctorsare U.S.-trained andlicensed — although there is at leastone experiment using radiologists without U.S. training.
Dr. Wachter is associate chairman of the Department of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco.
An interview with Dr. Wachter can be heard at www.nejm.org.
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Interview
