Staffing Your MRI Center - Full Service
Staffing your MRI Imaging Center, Expert Recruiting and Training
- Module #15
MRI Center Staffing
Determining The Technologist Coverage you will need when Staffing your MRI Imaging Center
Your staffing needs depend on the number of scans your business analysis indicates you anticipate performing each year and the type of scans you project you will perform.
Scans performed "With and Without Contrast" take longer, affecting the total number of scans you can perform per hour per year.
You can calculate the number of scan appointments you can manage daily based on your business's hours and days of operation per week.
After determining your technologist's projected annual vacation, educational training, and sick days, you can choose how many MRI technologists you will need and how many hours they will be required for each year.
In the MRI Technologist recruitment and interview process, you can find "as needed" additional backup for vacation and holiday coverage for your primary technologist. Depending on your yearly projected scan volume, you can determine if a second full or part-time technologist will be needed and should be hired.
Recruitment and Hiring
Our group has managed the recruitment and hiring process for both MRI Technologists and Front Office check-in/check personnel for client groups and their MRI Imaging Centers since 2006.
Assisting our clients, we have been able to find, hire, and retain some very high-quality MRI personnel.
With many years of experience as a successful Orthopedic and Spine Practice CEO, I have hired many medical group employees, including MRI Technologists and Front Office Personnel.
In the Consultation and Assistance Module, I will discuss"How to find and retain high-quality MRI Technologists and Front Office personnel."
Front Office Specialist
Depending on your MRI Imaging Center needs and your specific business setup, you may also need to hire a front office specialist who might be responsible for patient check-in and check-out, verifying insurance authorization, copying insurance cards, and collecting co-payment or collecting self-pay patient payments, and update limited medical and business records. This front office specialist can work closely with your MRI Technologist, take the MRI patient to the dressing/locker room area, and provide them with a locker, key for their clothes locker, and gown to be worn during the imaging process.
Ideally, your MRI Technologist will receive the patient after they have been fully gowned, and pre-MRI Scanning Communications will be provided with patient instruction and inquiry on the status of metal implants, not having metal objects with or on themselves. They will have identified if the patient may have any previously unremoved metal splinters, etc. The MRI Technologist will also explain to the patient what they will be experiencing with the MRI process, how long it might take, understand the patient and technologist communication process during the scan, and also inquire as to the music options and systems your MRI Suite might have available should they might wish to utilize during the MRI scan. (Some of this communication will probably be provided to the patient before coming in for the MRI scan).
If your MRI Imaging Center is a current medical practice setting, patient intake, and processing may often occur using existing personnel in the standard manner of patient processing in the primary practice setting. However, other factors advocate for a different patient intake process.
Hiring an Imaging Center Manager
If you are an Independent MRI Imaging Center or a center jointly managed to benefit several practice groups, you will want to hire a manager/director for the MRI Imaging Center business with the necessary responsibility for all management aspects as communicated by the MRI Imaging Center client owners. We can assist you with this process, provide professional mentoring, position descriptions, and responsibilities, and facilitate training and oversight for this key individual. Suppose your existing medical practice manager is taking on this role. In that case, we can provide them with education, assistance, training, and whatever level of as-needed aid might be required or desired by the client group.
You must decide whether to manage and staff an in-house patient billing and collections process or outsource it to an external group.
Of course, this needs to be determined early in the process, well before your MRI Imaging Center opens.
Our consultants are highly efficient and effective in working with MRI Imaging Center owner clients to find, screen, and set employment position descriptions for MRI technologists, Front Office Specialists, Imaging Center Managers, and billing and collections team members. Let us show you what great can look like!
In this Consultation and Assistance Module, we will address
- Are you an existing Medical Practice Group (or ASC), another entity adding MRI, or an IDTF?
- Type, Age, and make of MRI Magnet you will be implementing: Manufacturer name, new/refurbished, Extremity, 1.5T, 3.0 T.
- *Review the number of MRI scans you anticipate performing per year.
- *Review the breakdown of the MRI scan groupings you anticipate performing per year: MRI only, MRI with Contrast, and MRI with and Without Contrast. (Ok if you do not know)
- Review and discuss the Estimate of several MRI scan hours in a year.
- Review and estimate staffing requirements for Front Office and MRI Technologists. Full-time, Part-time, PRN.
- How many days, hours, and weeks per year do you anticipate being open?
- In what community will your MRI Imaging Center be located?
- Do you know the prevailing community wage for MRI Technologists, Front Office Personnel, and MRI center managers in your community? Will your employment package offer similar wages? Will it be consistent with the prevailing community wage?
- Discussion of various Staffing and Service Delivery Models.
- Discuss staff training options.
- Extensive discussion on how to find and retain high-quality MRI technologists and front office personnel.
- Discussion of the need for employee job descriptions.
- Hiring a center Manager: Why or Why not? Who will perform that function?
- We will be prepared to answer all questions regarding this area of MRI project work.
Teleradiology/Radiologist – Full Service – 11