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Imaging Volume Backlash, Patient AI Payments, and Apple in Radiology
April 9, 2026
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Together with
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“Is David Cutler doing his research on the moon? If he picked up the phone and called any radiologist or any hospital administrator on this planet, he may have realized something was highly flawed in his methodology.”
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Radiology Partners Chairman and CEO Rich Whitney, on a recent article on imaging volume.
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A backlash is building in response to a controversial paper published last week claiming that growth in U.S. medical imaging volume has slowed over the past several decades. The claims were met with disbelief by many imaging experts who see a growing disconnect between imaging volume and the number of radiologists available to interpret images.
Rising imaging volume has become a mantra within radiology as the field struggles to cope with growing healthcare needs from an aging population and the increasing complexity of imaging technology.
- Like other healthcare professionals, radiologists are experiencing rising burnout levels, and a cottage industry of AI and IT solutions has emerged to help them work more efficiently.
But the new paper challenges many of those assumptions. Published as a commentary in JAMA Health Forum by Harvard University economists David Cutler, PhD, and Lev Klarnet, the article cites previously published research on imaging volume from 2003 to 2016, stating that imaging use per capita stabilized in 2008 and began declining thereafter.
- The authors suggest it’s unnecessary to dramatically increase the U.S. supply of radiologists given slowing growth: “The decrease in imaging has allowed the US to meet the need for imaging without an increase in radiologists.”
The paper quickly drew criticism from a number of radiology key opinion leaders, including Radiology Partners Chairman and CEO Rich Whitney (who suggested the authors were doing their research on the moon) and radiologist blogger Ben White, MD, who called some of their claims “nonsensical.”
Indeed, the major fallacy in the JAMA Health Forum paper comes from its conclusion that a lower per capita imaging growth rate obviates the need to expand the radiologist labor pool.
Most damning, however, is the paper’s reliance on data that’s nearly a decade old: The Hong et al paper published in Radiology in 2019.
The Takeaway
There are some valuable (and positive) points made in the JAMA Health Forum paper, such as its contention that medical imaging is used more judiciously now than it was 20 years ago. But to make the leap that radiology’s workforce crisis has been solved simply strains belief.
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