MONDAY, April 6, 2026 (HealthDay News) — A look at millions of medical imaging orders finds Americans are waiting twice as long now for their results as they did in 2014, with the biggest surge in wait times occurring recently.

Shortages of trained radiologists are to blame for the problem, with poorer communities being especially hard hit, researchers say.

“While turnaround times increased for all income groups, they increased more for the low-income groups, worsening already longer turnaround times in these communities as a secondary effect," said study co-author Dr. Michele Johnson, a professor of radiology and biomedical imaging at Yale School of Medicine. 

The findings didn't come as a surprise to Johnson and her colleagues: Radiologist shortages have been reported for years and spurred the new study.

“Although anecdotal reports from frontline radiologists did not spike until 2025, the urgency presented by delayed diagnosis and treatment caused us to initiate the study with available data through 2023,” explained study co-author Dr. Christoph Wald, professor of radiology at the Mayo Clinic. 

He and Johnson commented in a news release from the Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute, a think tank focused on radiology in health care.

In the new study, researchers looked at data gleaned from Medicare claims for more than 2.6 million office/hospital outpatient imaging studies. The scans were conducted in the United States between 2014 and 2023.

Turnaround times for radiology results remained relatively stable between 2014 and 2021, then took a big jump in 2022, the team found. 

“Visually, the increase in turnaround times looks like a hockey stick. It is generally flat with annual fluctuations from 2014 through 2021, and then it sharply increased beginning in 2022,” study lead author Eric Christensen, research director at the Neiman Institute, said in the news release. 

In all, 19% of the total 2014-2023 rise in turnaround time occurred in 2022, and 68% in 2023, the researchers reported.

Wait times for results of a CT scan rose four-fold (318%) over the study period, while MRI results took more than three times as long (256%) to get to patients, the study found. Ultrasound wait times rose by 140% and radiography/fluoroscopy by 68%.

“With growing shortages of radiologists, reports of delays in interpretation due to capacity constraints are increasingly common in recent years," said senior author Dr. Greg Nicola. 

“The results show that an inflection point has occurred," said Nicola, who is Economics Chair of the American College of Radiology. "Turnaround times were stable for many years and then doubled in two years."

Poorer communities were hardest hit. 

“We found that turnaround times were higher for Medicare beneficiaries residing in low-income communities (per capita income under $25,000) compared with high-income communities (per capita income $100,000 or more),” Johnson noted. 

The problem may only get worse for patients stressing over the much-anticipated results of a medical scan.

“We think these results are an early indicator of a worsening problem," said study co-author Dr. Cindy Yuan, assistant professor of clinical radiology at Indiana University School of Medicine. "If the sudden change in 2022 reflects that there is no remaining capacity for the radiology workforce to absorb new workload, then continued imaging growth will eventually impact patients."

The findings were published March 31 in the Journal of the American College of Radiology. 

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SOURCE: Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute, news release, March 31, 2026