Our presence on site on a daily basis helps our physicians with their diagnostic dilemmas. If you don't provide the service, someone else will.

We're looking at ways to get creative about how we can do the management of the calls. It's a fairly significant issue we are facing with the increasing volume of work and the aging population. The number of radiologists being trained is not meeting the need.

I think they provide a necessary service, particularly to smaller hospitals and smaller communities. We've thought about it, we've contemplated it, but it's not the format that fits us yet.

We found no consensus among physicians about what is customary or appropriate. Despite efforts to standardize many aspects of the doctor-patient relationship, patients are likely to encounter very different approaches.

Boone Pickens is one of this country's greatest philanthropists, and Eugene Frenkel is one of its finest physicians, so this partnership is as appropriate as it is meaningful.

She didn't tell anyone in town about it. We just found out because one of my physicians is on the board.