Night and emergency reporting
Somebody rostered, awake and credentialed, every night.
Raydiac’s night and emergency reporting service gives hospitals and diagnostic centres in India a roster of credentialed, NMC-verified radiologists on evening, night, weekend and holiday shifts. STAT studies go to the top of every list, critical findings are phoned to your coordinator and tracked to acknowledgement, and every report is signed by name.
- Evening, night, weekend and holiday shifts
- STAT first, with a backup route
- Critical-result call, acknowledgement tracked
- Preliminary and final states, day-team addenda
| Order | Study | Site | Priority | Due in | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RDX-26-000418 | CT Brain, plain | District hospital | STAT | 00:41 | Reading |
| RDX-26-000417 | CT KUB | Diagnostic centre | Urgent | 02:58 | Assigned |
| RDX-26-000416 | MRI Lumbar spine | Diagnostic centre | Routine | 14:20 | Queued |
| RDX-26-000415 | CT Chest, contrast | District hospital | Routine | 11:05 | Draft |
| RDX-26-000414 | MRI Brain, contrast | Nursing home | Urgent | Signed | Delivered |
Tonight’s list at one site: a STAT CT brain reading, an urgent CT KUB assigned, routine work queued behind them.
The problem
Stroke and trauma do not arrive at ten in the morning.
A hospital with one radiologist has cover from nine to six, and a CT scanner that runs until the emergency department empties. The AHA/ASA acute stroke guidelines describe a window of up to 4.5 hours from symptom onset for intravenous thrombolysis in eligible patients; the CT brain that decides eligibility is acquired at 2 am and needs a read before the window closes, not after the morning round. Trauma is the same story with a different clock.
What most Indian hospitals do tonight is photograph the console and send it to a radiologist who may or may not be awake, with no history, no priors, no record and no responsibility. Raydiac replaces that with a roster.
Nobody owns the night
The day radiologist is asleep, the visiting consultant comes on Tuesdays, and the emergency physician is reading CT brains alone. When a bleed is missed at 3 am, no agreement says whose miss it was.
The gap is where the risk is
A hospital is most exposed in exactly the hours it has least cover. Emergency CT after hours is where the highest-stakes decisions are made on the thinnest evidence.
A second radiologist does not fix it
A permanent radiologist costs ₹9 to 25 lakh a year and still cannot cover evenings, weekends, nights and leave. Two of them cannot either. A roster of many, each reading a shift, can.
What Raydiac’s night cover is
A roster, a routing rule, a phone call, and a record.
Night cover from Raydiac is the same platform as day cover, with a roster built for the hours and a service-level target set for STAT work.
A roster of credentialed radiologists on shifts
Radiologists on the Raydiac panel choose evening, night, weekend and holiday shifts in advance. Each shift has named readers and a stand-by, and only radiologists holding an active credential for your organisation and modality can be rostered for your studies.
STAT-first routing with a backup route
A STAT order goes to the top of every rostered radiologist’s list. If the first reader does not accept within the time box, the order is offered to the next, and Raydiac’s operations team is alerted. The service-level countdown is visible to your coordinator throughout.
A critical-result call to your named coordinator
A finding on your agreed critical-results list opens a communication task. Your coordinator is called; the task records who, when, on which channel, and who acknowledged. Unacknowledged calls escalate. The task closes only on confirmation.
Preliminary and final states, with day-team addenda
Night reports can be issued as preliminary and finalised later, or signed final directly, as your site prefers. Both are signed and time-stamped. Your day radiologist can add an addendum to any night report; the original is never overwritten.
What it is not
Not a promise of minutes. A target, in writing, with credits.
No honest network can guarantee that every STAT CT will be read in a fixed number of minutes at every hour of every night. Raydiac does not claim to. What Raydiac puts in your agreement is a service-level target for each priority, a countdown against it on every open study, monthly compliance figures by priority, and service credits when the target is missed.
What good turnaround looks like| Priority | Typical night examples | Target |
|---|---|---|
| STAT | CT brain for stroke or head injury, CT pulmonary angiography, trauma pan-scan, MRI spine for cord compression. | STAT target in your agreement. Top of every list, backup route, critical-result call. |
| Urgent | CT KUB from the emergency department, CT abdomen before an overnight admission decision. | Urgent target in your agreement, ahead of routine on the same shift. |
| Routine | Evening outpatient MRI knee, late-list contrast CT for staging. | Routine target, which may run into the next day shift by agreement. |
Priority is set by your coordinator at intake and can be raised by the radiologist. It can never be lowered, by anyone.
How sites use it
Five patterns. Start with one, add the next.
Night cover is configured per site as shifts and cut-offs, not as a package. Most sites begin with nights or weekends and extend once the panel has read for them for a month.
| Pattern | The site | What Raydiac takes |
|---|---|---|
| Evenings only | A hospital whose radiologist leaves at six and whose emergency department fills up at eight. | Panel takes everything acquired between the day radiologist’s sign-off and a fixed evening cut-off. |
| Nights only | A hospital with day cover and a CT that runs all night for the emergency department. | Panel takes every study from the night cut-off until the day radiologist starts, including STAT and urgent. |
| Weekends and holidays | A diagnostic centre that scans on Sundays but cannot get reports until Monday. | Panel covers agreed days in full, with routine work read within the weekend target. |
| Full 24x7 cover | A hospital without a radiologist, or one whose post has been open for a year. | Panel reads every shift. Day, evening and night shifts appear as separate lines on the rate card. |
| Overflow | A hospital with a radiologist whose day list regularly runs past what one person can sign. | Studies the day radiologist has not accepted by an agreed time are routed to the panel automatically. |
Handover
Priors travel with the study
Earlier CT and MRI studies from your site are matched in the identity vault and attached to the night order automatically. The night radiologist compares against last month’s scan rather than reading in isolation, and the mandatory clinical history and question travel with the order.
Continuity
The day team picks up where the night left off
Every night report is in your portal by morning with its priority, its critical-result task if any, and its preliminary or final state. Your day radiologist can add an addendum, order a second read, or raise a query on the order. Nothing lives in a chat thread.
Quality
Night reads are reviewed, on purpose
A random sample of night reads goes to peer review, and any discrepancy the day team records is tracked as a quality measure for the panel. Discrepancy review of overnight reporting is how radiology departments measure night cover; Raydiac does the same and shares the figures with your site.
Pricing
Night shift lines cost more. You can see why.
The Raydiac rate card carries separate lines for day, evening and night shifts, and for weekends and holidays. Night lines cost more because the radiologist reading at 3 am is paid more for the hour, and the radiologist’s share of every line is published next to the platform fee. There is no hidden night surcharge: the shift line is the price. One monthly invoice, GST on the platform fee only, no minimum, no lock-in.
How the rate card is builtRelated services
CT reporting
Emergency neuro, chest, abdomen and trauma CT are most of what a night roster reads.
MRI reporting
STAT MRI spine and brain after hours, and the routine MRI that arrives after the day list closes.
All teleradiology services
What every Raydiac site gets, and how a managed service differs from a marketplace.
FAQ
Questions about night and emergency reporting
What is nighthawk teleradiology?
How quickly does Raydiac report a STAT CT at night?
Who reads our studies at 2 am?
What happens when the night radiologist finds something critical?
Are night reports preliminary or final?
Can we buy night cover only and keep our own radiologist for the day?
What does night reporting cost?
Tell us which hours nobody covers. We will roster them.
Raydiac is onboarding a first cohort of hospitals and diagnostic centres in Punjab, with evenings, nights and weekends covered from day one. Share your scanners, your after-hours volume and the hours you need, and we will come back within two working days.
You will need a named coordinator, with a phone number, who receives critical-result calls at any hour.