EP256: A Major Health Care Cost Driver Revealed: Misdiagnoses in Radiology, With Ron Vianu, Founder and CEO of Covera Health

You know how in JAMA recently it said that 25% or more of health care spending is frittered away wastefully? Some of that wasteful spending comes from unnecessary care. And some of that unnecessary care happens when a patient is misdiagnosed and then, based on that misdiagnosis, gets care for the wrong thing. And “wrong thing” care obviously isn’t going to fix the actual problem because its intention is to fix something else.

How do some of these misdiagnoses occur? Considering all of the diagnoses that begin with an MRI or a CT scan or an ultrasound or some other kind of imaging, it’s not hard to gin up thought that if a radiology report or radiology veers into the “not exactly correct” zone, then you have a treatment plan immediately zipping off on a poor-quality and likely wasteful trajectory.

That’s what I speak with Ron Vianu about in this health care podcast. Ron, by the way, is the founder and CEO over at Covera Health. We don’t have time (Ron and I) to get into the AI (artificial intelligence) and machine learning in radiology aspect, but (spoiler alert) a follow-up on that is forthcoming.

Ron Vianu is the CEO and co-founder of Covera Health and a serial entrepreneur and problem solver by nature. He has spent the last 20+ years founding ventures in the health care, technology, and insurance spaces. Ron studied chemistry and philosophy at NYU.