The needs of each hospital and imaging center are so diverse, it is difficult and expensive to staff with radiologists in every specialty. Therefore, most hospitals, even many of the larger urban facilities, use teleradiology for some of their specialty interpretations and almost exclusively for overnight services.
Many have found teleradiology particularly beneficial because it allows them the same high quality, sub-specialty interpretation access as those of much larger, more populous areas. It can be hard to justify a full-time in-house radiologist, let alone a team of fellowship trained specialists in all aspects of diagnostic imaging.
Hospitals that have on-site radiologists often find the need to augment their service offering with assistance from a teleradiology group that can “fill in” when scheduling and coverage gaps inevitably occur.