Building an IR Department From Scratch

Dr. Hidlay begins by discussing how he was recruited out of fellowship into a medical group in Virginia. They offered him the opportunity to build an entire IR practice and do the kinds of procedures that he wanted to bring with whatever skills he had from his residency at Brown and fellowship at the University of Washington. He is employed by a hospital group where he does about 30% diagnostic radiology, runs his own clinic and sees consults. He was hired to prioritize IR, and feels very supported by his diagnostic colleagues to do so.

We discuss what he learned through this process, and what he wished he would have known. He says the biggest surprises were from his own naivete, having gone straight into this position out of fellowship. The administration was up front with him and told him to expect to have to build this practice from scratch. When he started, he had 6 FTEs including himself, a scheduler, 3 techs and 3 nurses. He started off doing about 10 paracenteses, a couple lung biopsies and some thyroid biopsies per week. He attributes his success to showing up consistently. He asked for time to talk at every local practice and grand rounds. He met with surgeons, hospitalists, and primary care doctors to tell them what he could do, with the idea that even if they didn’t remember, they would have his number and could reach him at any time. What he didn’t realize was how much of a need there was. He soon became overwhelmed by the demand, and realized he was in over his head, doing 12-18 cases daily with the same support staff.

As for acquiring equipment to do procedures, Dr. Hidlay feels he was fortunate to have administration who were willing to believe him when he said he needed certain equipment. When it came to training staff, he often worked with them at the backtable and taught them how to use the image intensifier (II) controls to help them ‘learn by doing’. He started out on call 24/7, while his 3 techs and nurses were on call every 3 days. He slowly adjusted this as it was unsustainable for all, and has more staff now. By volume, he still mostly does light IR and feels that if he didn’t accept these cases he would never have built trust and made connections to referring providers. He also has a kyphoplasty service, a venous thromboembolism (VTE) service, and also does a sizeable volume of renal ablations, chemoembolizations, and emergent bleeds. He is hoping to bring on two more IRs to round out his practice and meet the community demand.