For departments
What we are asking of department leads
This page is written for department leads in New Zealand and abroad. The exchange is reciprocal by design, so most participants will eventually do both things it describes: host a visiting Fellow, and send their own radiologists out. The request at this stage is help in designing and testing the model, rather than a commitment to a placement.
Hosting a Meridian Fellow
An experienced, present, awake visiting colleague for teaching, second opinions, research and audit, funded entirely by their home system, at no cost to your reporting budget. Because the Fellow is roughly twelve hours offset from their own worklist, they are alert and available during the hours your department is busiest.
Alongside the day-to-day support: international collegiality, a fresh perspective on protocols and pathways, durable inter-departmental relationships, and a reciprocal placement for your own people.
- A reliable public internet connection and office space.
- A welcoming, collegial environment for the visiting Fellow.
- A standard honorary or observer arrangement, so the licence-free support (teaching, second opinions, research, audit) can take place.
The host does not employ, pay or take clinical responsibility for the Fellow. The Fellow's reporting device connects to their home system and does not touch the host's clinical network.
Sending your own radiologists
Overnight and peak cover by your own radiologists, reporting rested and in daylight. Final reports into your own system, with no morning re-read. Reduced or avoided outsourcing and night-premium spend, kept inside the public system. And a recruitment and retention offer that answers the wish to travel, so the radiologist who wants a year abroad takes a Fellowship and comes back, rather than resigning for a teleradiology provider.
- Keeping its Fellows fully salaried, with benefits, registration, indemnity and clinical governance unchanged.
- Configuring and supporting the secure reporting link back to its own systems.
- Managing the clinical workflow, including final reporting into the home system and the communication of critical findings back to home clinicians.
- Clearing tax, immigration and registration for its own staff, with corridor-level groundwork provided by the programme.
What the programme provides
Meridian is a managed scheme rather than a noticeboard: it does the difficult, repeatable work once. Every corridor reuses a shared standard and a set of reference materials:
- a secure IT and information-governance reference design;
- a clinical-governance memorandum of understanding;
- per-corridor guidance on registration, right-to-work and tax;
- a common quality-assurance baseline; and
- the matching platform that pairs sending and hosting departments, including reciprocal house-swap exchanges where they can be arranged.
Governance sits with a programme board on which participating systems are represented, and the endorsement of the relevant colleges will be sought.
The ask, right now
We are not asking department leads to commit to a Fellowship today. We are asking those who see the value to help turn early interest into a tested model. In practice:
- Confirm in principle that your department is interested in both hosting and sending radiologists.
- Indicate a preferred corridor or departmental partner, if you have one in mind.
- Join a small founding working group to co-design the pilot and the shared logistical templates that every later participant will use.
- Help identify a likely first cohort: the radiologists who would be interested in taking up an early Fellowship.
From there, we propose pilots on each corridor, with success defined in advance: report turnaround, discrepancy and re-read rates, retention and wellbeing, outsourcing spend avoided, and host satisfaction. A working example would then make the case for scaling more persuasively than any proposal.
Corridor-by-corridor detail, in both directions, is set out on the corridor pages.