A paraphrased reader question:
I want to be a daytime tele neurorad. Why do so many of the listings seem to be for body? Are there too many neurorads?
I don’t think it’s really that there are too many neuroradiologists per se. It’s that the true need across the widest variety of practice types is general radiology.
If body imagers only read specialized body MRI, they wouldn’t be filling the holes that we have as a field. The greatest need is for plain films, ultrasound, and generic CT.
That is generally part of the job for body imagers, but many neurorads (and other subspecialties as well) really want to read more within their subspecialty, leaving a pile of general radiology for which groups are desperate enough to bring on remote readers.
In reality, there is nothing about a thyroid ultrasound that should make it a “body” examination and not a neuro one, given that the thyroid gland is in the neck. But this is the way everyone practices.
As a result, if a group hires more neurorads to support general needs without needing a full neuro FTE, that dilutes the available neuro work and requires the neurorads to start reading more general radiology. They, generally, don’t want to do that. And in practices where neurorads are 100% or nearly fully subspecialized, they don’t have the ability to overflow into another subspecialty easily.
Staffing in body typically doesn’t really work that way: smaller changes to their casemix aren’t going to result in a super different job or fundamentally change the spectrum of cases they interpret. No new skills needed.
And therefore, body is the greatest need. Not because there are an infinite number of liver MRIs to read (though there are a lot), but rather because we need people who are willing to do basic radiology work. And many body radiologists are expected to do that.
At least that’s my impression of the current state.
There is daytime tele neuro work out there, but I agree it’s mostly if you’re also willing to also read general too.