I believe in the importance of thriving independent private practices for the field of radiology. True private practice–where doctors control the organization, are responsible to their peers and patients, and earn the full fruits of their labor–is the benchmark that sets the market and provides the anchor against exploitation from unscrupulous employers.

My group, like most groups in this market, is hiring. Here are 10 more 100%-independent radiologist-owned private practices across the US that are recruiting. If you’re in the market for a new position, consider reaching out with your CV. (Click the triangles for more information.)

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Midwest Radiology

(Minneapolis – St. Paul, Minnesota)

Large 175+ subspecialized practice with 17 weeks of vacation. Two-year shareholder track for new graduates and a one-year track with experience.

Positions (On-site):

Learn more at www.midwestradiology.com.
Contact: Barry.Lindo@MidwestRadiology.com

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Mecklenburg Radiology Associates

(Charlotte, North Carolina)

Established in 1917 and fiercely independent, MRA is a well-respected subspecialized practice of 57 radiologists and growing. They especially take pride in their group culture (seriously, there are some really nice people in that group including one of my old senior residents).

Partnership track:

• 3-year partnership track with 8 weeks of vacation per year
  $400K starting salary and an additional $75K sign-on bonus ($125K with 2+ years of experience)
• On-site daytime hospital and imaging center coverage. Hybrid evening and weekend call coverage, including the option to read from home.
• Available positions: Breast, Body, Cardiovascular, Neuro, Light IR, MSK, and General

Employee track:

• Fully remote, hybrid, or on-site options
• Competitive salary
• Available positions: General, Overnight ER, Swing Shift ER
• Overnight Details

Learn more at www.meckrad.com/recruitment.
Contact: Charlene Eichinger at ceichinger@meckrad.com

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Radiology Associates of Ocala

(Ocala, Florida)

A growing Central Florida private practice, rare for the region, with 70+ radiologists looking for an on-site general radiologist.

• Practice owns multiple imaging centers, generating technical fees and rental income for partners.
• New business ventures of software development and a separate Telerad company.
• Optional internal moonlighting available. Nights are covered by dedicated internal nighthawks.
• Option to rotate/vacation in the US Virgin Islands at a practice-owned timeshare at the St. Thomas Ritz.
• Equitable non-tiered 3-year partnership track with nominal buy-in and equal call/PTO/scheduling for pre-partner and partners. 14+ weeks vacation (~185 shifts/yr).

Learn more at https://raocala.com.
Contact: Dr. Vivek Kalra at Vivek.Kalra@raocala.com

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Grand Traverse Radiologists

(Traverse City, Michigan)

Established in 1938, GTR is a 100% physician-owned and operated private practice in a four-season resort town on the bays of Lake Michigan.

• High compensation and 12 weeks vacation
• Post-call weekend days off
• Internal moonlighting available
• Positions/partnerships are on-site, but multiple shifts can be done from home.
• Collegial and youthful group with an average age under 40. All partners are equal.
• Hiring for growth. Lists are caught up!

Needs: Body, Breast, ER/General, and IR

Learn more at https://www.grandtraverseradiologists.com
Contact: Dr. Anthony Livorine at alivorine@gtradiologists.com

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RAPA

(Central Arkansas [Little Rock, Conway, Searcy, and Pine Bluff] & Northwest Arkansas)

40+ radiologists covering 20+ sites with a multi-subpecialty mix of inpatient, outpatient, and ED imaging. Robust reading room assistants and IT presence to promote peak efficiency including a unified reading list/PACS (no switching stations or PACS to read other sites) and RadAI automated impressions to improve efficiency.

Greatest needs are IR, mammography, body imaging, MSK, and nuclear medicine, but all subspecialties and general radiologists are welcome.

Partnership track:

• 2 years to partner for new graduates, 1 year with experience
• 10 weeks vacation + 1/2 day off per week on average for partners
• Highly competitive compensation combined with a low cost of living
• Internal moonlighting options to boost income
• Robust CME allowance, signing and moving bonuses, full benefits
• Many work-from-home shift options
• Minimal after-hours requirements, overnight shifts are fully staffed with telerads

Employee track:

• Flexible scheduling (mammography, teleradiology swing shift, other options available)
• Fully remote, hybrid, or on-site options available
• Competitive salaries
• Robust CME allowance, signing and moving bonuses, full benefits

Learn more at http://rapaxray.com/
Contact: recruitment@rapaxray.com and Dr. Brandon Kelly at bkelly@rapaxray.com

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Iowa Radiology

(Des Moines, Iowa)

34-radiologist subspecialized collegial private practice with long-term stability providing coverage to 30 locations across Central and North Central Iowa. Ownership of several outpatient imaging locations yields distributions from technical fees, and Des Moines is one of the fastest-growing areas in the country with a low cost of living, excellent schools, and low taxes.

Partnership track:

• 2-year partnership track with 12 weeks vacation
• On-site daytime coverage; hybrid night and weekend call coverage
• Greatest needs: Breast, Neuro, General. All subspecialties considered for the right candidate.

Employee track:

• Fully remote, hybrid, or on-site options
• Excellent salary and benefits package, including up to 10 weeks of vacation
• Available positions: General, Breast, Flex Shift, Overnight
  • Overnight shift is 10p-8a CST, 7 on/14 off, 100% teleradiology with average 90-120 total cases per shift

Learn more at http://www.iowaradiology.com
Contact: recruit@iowarad.com

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Diagnostic Radiology Associates of Western Colorado

(Grand Junction, Colorado)

A small four-partner practice at an outdoor oasis (Colorado’s “best kept secret”) looking for a fellowship-trained radiologist to be number 5.

• Broad diagnostic work including mammo and light IR
• Work from 2 hospitals 15 minutes apart
• Excellent work/life balance including weekends/call from home
• 1-year partnership track
• ~10 weeks PTO

Learn more here.
Contact: Dr. Bryan Stover at bjstover1@gmail.com

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West Reading Radiology Associates

(West Reading, Pennsylvania)

50+ year-old true private practice with 25+ radiologists, hiring one cross-sectional reader (Body/Chest, ER, or Neuro) with varying degrees of sub-specialization available.

• ~14 weeks PTO, which can even be taken as single days, and top quartile compensation including 401k, HRA, HSA and optional cash balance plan.
• Holidays/Holiday weekends are 100% optional (staffed via an internal bidding system)
• No overnights (nighthawk in place)
• 1 hour to Philly, 2 hours to NYC.
• Local public schools rank in the top 10% of Pennsylvania public schools.

Learn more at https://readingradiology.com.
Contact: Missy DeBock at mdebockwrra@gmail.com

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Hudson Valley Radiologists

(Poughkeepsie, New York)

A congenial team of 25 sub-specialized radiologists in New York’s scenic Hudson Valley that understands the importance of work-life balance. Since the 1970s, HVR has been respected in the community and known for its entrepreneurial spirit and excellence in patient care, currently providing services to five local hospitals and multiple outpatient imaging centers.

Learn more at https://www.hvrads.com/
Contact: Dr. Benjamin Hentel at bmh@hvrads.com

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Radiology Associates of North Texas

(Dallas, Fort Worth, Texarkana, Sherman/Denison, Longview, Tyler, Lubbock, Waco)

The largest 100% radiologist-owned and operated group in the country, serving the greater North Texas area since 1937. 290+ radiologists, 30+ APPs, and robust business staff support. Low turnover, healthy culture, ownership mentality, work-life balance, reasonable call schedules, and unlimited voluntary internal moonlighting (both scheduled shifts and anytime when not scheduled). 24/7 neuro and pedi subspecialty support.

The practice is organized into four distinct areas within DFW and seven distinct regions outside the Metroplex. This allows for practice opportunities ranging from small & intimate to large & subspecialized.

Positions (On-site):

Positions (Remote):

Learn more at https://radntx.com/radjobs
Contact: Todd Howard @ radjobs@radntx.com

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If you’re a group looking to advertise, get in touch. I am in the process of starting a separate standalone independent radiology job board website as a resource for the broader community, but the (currently full) listings here are temporary and limited to just 10 groups at a time.

Here’s a little compilation of posts from the last few years about getting started as a new radiology resident.

Doing

Approaching the Radiology R1 Year and its short companion post: How to be a First-Year Radiology Resident.

Want something a little more controversial? You Should be Correlating Clinically.

Learning

Book Recommendations for First-Year Radiology Residents (and some further recommendations for when there’s extra book fund to burn).

You can round that out with some more general thoughts on studying during residency. Then try my deeper dive: ultralearning radiology.

Also, residents from across the country in the ACR Resident and Fellow Section came together and assembled a nice collection of free radiology learning resources from across the interwebs including lots of videos.

Should new residents worry about workflow efficiency and ergonomics?

Yes.

I don’t think it’s ever too early to start thinking deliberately about what makes you better and more efficient in your job or able to act more sustainably. If anything, spending more time on workflow and ergonomics early on in your career is an investment in yourself.

As a resident, I just used whatever was plugged into the workstation I sat at. This eventually led to wrist pain, which even more eventually led me to finally address my setup as an attending. The physical discomfort became obvious. The hit on my productivity/efficiency for all those years was invisible until I made the changes.

Many people, especially once out in practice, become entrenched in their behavior patterns and find it very difficult (and even frankly overwhelming) to approach changing how they work, even when the change is clearly beneficial.

I would say, on a practical level, that it may take some time after starting residency to know exactly what your needs are, what you like and don’t like about the default approach, and what an ideal workflow may be. But taking the basic step of buying a good mouse and programming it to help use PACS is an approachable and very helpful first step. At least do that, and then you can decide if you need to go down the rabbit hole.

The Approach

In general, you will find things easier especially as a resident if you can have a setup that requires no on-site software/driver installation, given the realities of bouncing around multiple workstations and the difficulties of working with your local IT department. Devices that can store their own settings and function plug-and-play on any computer are often described as having onboard memory.

I think a reasonable approach early on would at least involve some kind of gaming or productivity mouse to store window-level settings and your favorite PACS tools.

As you can see if you dive into my multi-post series, I personally divide these tasks between a left-hand device and a right-hand device and also incorporate dictation controls with Autohotkey. I think this is the optimal approach (and one that some of my residents have even now begun using). A dictaphone-free approach however really does require AutoHotkey to work efficiently, so utilizing this would depend on if you are able to get the executable file onto a workstation in order to run your shortcuts (or if the thing is locked down so tight that you won’t be able to). You may not know until you try or talk to someone local who has.

So, if you decide to take the streamlined approach and try to put all the PACS tools you want on a single device, you may find it helpful to have something with a large number of configurable buttons. A good example would be the reasonably priced UtechSmart VenusPro (a 16-button wireless mouse that includes a 12-button thumb grid). The G604 Lightspeed would be another popular choice (more expensive, adjustable scroll wheel, 6 thumb buttons). I personally use a “vertical” mouse, and I discuss even more mouse options (and everything else) at length in my “best stuff” post. (My hospital mouse is the very inexpensive Zelotes–which I describe how I use here–but it won’t be for everyone.)

Unless your radiology department is more forward-thinking and responsive than most, whatever is plugged into your computer is unlikely to be a good mouse for utilizing PACS. Even if it is, it probably isn’t configured the way you want, so literally any variety of productivity or gaming mouse that you customize yourself will provide some obvious and immediate benefits. The ultimate goal is that you should not need to move your hand off your mouse (or put down your microphone) in order to use a keyboard for routine actions.

If you need to touch the keyboard for every case, I would say you’re doing it wrong.

How Many Buttons Do I Really Need?

Good question. Everyone is different.

Some potentially very helpful shortcuts will vary a little by how your PACS handles measurements and things like zoom/pan. Some PACS automatically incorporate a manipulation tool like zooming into the central mouse wheel click or holding left/right mouse buttons simultaneously, whereas others require a keyboard shortcut. Some PACS will automatically helpfully change what the right click does depending on which PACS tool is active. Others do not. Some PACS delete measurements by double-clicking, and some make you press the delete key. That’s why it can be challenging to completely figure out what you want without some trial and error and becoming familiar with your local enterprise software function.

But here is one version:

Four window/level presets are probably sufficient for most people’s needs (e.g. soft tissue, lung, bone + brain or liver or your fourth favorite).

Some common choices for mouse button shortcuts are the measure tool, the ROI tool, delete, localizer/3D cursor to cross-register findings, and whatever button you need to turn back on power scrolling. Again, the exact details vary by PACS. That’s ~five more.

Most people would find the angle tool or spine labeling to be less important, but obviously in some cases those are in constant use, etc. Some PACS have a dedicated toggleable navigation pane to see priors and image series.

Add those together (~12) and it’s not hard to see how one can go crazy and fill up the thumb grid on one of these mice with all tools you need, even if you aren’t trying to add toggling dictation + previous/next template fields as well (3 more).

I will admit that it can be hard to retain all of these in muscle memory, which is one reason why I like using both hands. I suspect a lot of residents are already learning so much and doing so many new things that a smaller number of inputs may be more likely to fall in the sweet spot of being helpful without being overwhelming–but if you’re willing to put the time and energy in, you can get a ton of mileage from a high-button mouse.

Regardless, there is no world where you wouldn’t rather at least change your window/level settings from your mouse instead of dropping your mouse to hit the numpad on your keyboard instead.

Ultimately, the more things become easy for you to do, the more frustrating it is when some task requires you to break your flow.

Take Home

I’m not suggesting you should go full nerd mode and spend a bunch of money.

But, yes, you should at least get a programmable mouse for work.