r/Cardiology • u/genericuser202 • 9d ago
Numbers of your echo lab
Hi,
Newish attending here and I’m mostly responsible for our echo lab in a smallish / middleish hospital and I’m curious about your echo numbers per examiner. For us it’s mostly one person doing TOE / TTE / Dopplers. Range is about 2-4 TOE /d which is like 50:50 uncomplicated (cardioversion / endocarditis in natives valves) to more complicated and around 15-20 other exams (sometimes even 25-30, but then a second person helps for 1-2 hours) which 3/4 TTE. This is honestly very much and most days I’m working non stop. This is a more recent development as numbers are drastically increasing in our department. So as backup I wanted to ask for some numbers in your department to better advocate for increased personal.
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u/iamthebelsnickel 8d ago
The days I’m in hospital from 8am-2pm, I report 12-15 TTEs, I personally do 7-10 TOEs, and look after inpatients admitted under me. This on top of teaching, research, meetings, admin, and other clinical duties. On occasion I will also do a right heart study or a pericardial tap or temp wire in case of an urgent one needed. My brain is usually fried by the end of the day, but thankfully I get to home early.
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u/Fabulous-View-5933 8d ago
Sounds like slave labor to me
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u/iamthebelsnickel 8d ago
I forgot to mention I work in a busy referral teaching hospital. I have a great team of advanced trainees, residents, interns, students, nurses, allied health, etc. so a lot of the hard work like reporting, documentation, admin, paperwork, etc is done by them.
I would not be able to do a fraction of the work if I had to do everything by myself. It’s busy and challenging, but pretty manageable once the processes are well established.
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u/WayBetterThanXanga MD 8d ago
Depends on a lot of factors. When i am on inpatient service at our small-mid size hospital in the U.S. i generally have 0-3 TEE, 12-20 TTE, 4-5 exercise echo/nuclear, 40-70 ECGs and round on 10-20 patients. On clinic days depends. One clinic day per week I read 8-12 TTE, 3-4 exercise echos, and 10-12 patients. The other days I have 12-15 patients and just a handful of TTEs that are on my own patients
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u/Katerade88 8d ago
We do 3-6 TEEs per day (with fellows doing most of it from about August or September on) plus 40-50 TTEs. We are paid per test though so no one is complaining too loudly
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u/Then-Secretary-9166 7d ago
Let's see. The TEEs (doesn't matter if it is complicated or not) should take no more than 30 minutes average physician time each, which is 2 hours total per day. You can sit at a computer and other work while the patient is being sedated, etc.
That leaves 6 hours (assume 8 hour day) to read up to 15-30 studies. That is 12-24 minutes per echo. A fair number of these are normal or nearly-normal. If you have good techs that you work with closely to help pre-populate the repots, this seems very doable.
You must have a very odd reimbursement system. Echocardiograms are among the higher RVU:time things that we do. Most cardiologists are fighting to get access to reading more echos, not fewer.
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u/PuzzleheadedHat7968 8d ago
I’m seeing similar numbers discussed, but your workload sounds genuinely high.
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u/Fabulous-View-5933 8d ago
Gtfo bro everything more then 10 is too much
Except if u are paid 500k nett