Brant Gamble is no stranger to some of the inefficiencies hospitals face when it comes to the difficulty of procuring diagnostics and imaging procedures in a timely fashion.

After his infant daughter was thought to be facing a life threatening disease, Gamble had to wait nearly a week to get back the results of scans that would prove if the child needed surgery for the illness or not.

The waiting prompted Gamble to offer to drive down to the site himself where the hospital had placed the order for the scans, just to speed up the process.

The good news is that when the test came back his daughter wasn't sick at all. The bad news was that the family went through nearly one week of pacing and worrying for something that could have been solved in a matter of minutes.

It is incidents like those that have prompted Gamble, the Trifecta Medical Group (Tulsa, Oklahoma) president to create a nationwide organization that will streamline the diagnostics and imaging methods from independent sources.

On Tuesday, Gamble reported the creation of the Imaging Radiology Oncology Association (IROA; also Tulsa). The agency is aimed at giving a cohesive representation to the diagnostic imaging community, and Gamble will be the first president for the organization.

The organization's mission is to ensure the improvement of efficiencies and access to life-saving diagnostic tests — while policing and managing regulatory legislation that would affect the diagnostic imaging community. The organization is designed to respond to the unique needs of the medical community who are increasingly responsible for the growth and financial health of their respective organizations.

It also is poised to remove a chunk of the burden that hospitals face in commissioning these procedures.

"There are already some associations already out there," Gamble told Medical Device Daily. "But what we found unfortunately was that because these other agencies' resources were so spread out – they just couldn't get the message out."

It's a key, crucial problem that Gamble stresses can't go on. So after years of hearing about the problem repeatedly from different Trifecta Medical Group customers he decided to do something huge.

Part of that will include employing a lobbyist that will communicate to Congress and the public that IDTFs operate in a more efficient manner than hospitals, therefore effectively reducing the overall cost of the healthcare system. It's a move that Gamble said could possibly put the agency in the crosshairs of hospitals.

"We assume we'll have some major opposition from hospitals," he told MDD. "But if anything, we really want to make sure that the hospitals are running efficiently."

Perhaps taking a page from the Advanced Medical Technology Association (Washington), the organization said it is poised to have an ethics policy that will be enforced.

In an age where transparency is key – Gamble told MDD that the group would be holding itself accountable and planned to be open to the public.

"We're going to stay on top of things," he said. "No more referral scams, no more underhanded dealings. We're going to pretty much police ourselves until the government decides to police us themselves."

The formation of the IROA comes at a time when the diagnostics sector is facing the worst isotope shortage in recent history.

Nearly a month ago, the Society of Nuclear Medicine (Reston, Virginia) declared the situation "dire" and said that common diagnostics and imaging tests had to be delayed due to hospitals and labs seeking to be conservative with supplies (Medical Device Daily, June 16, 2009). The shortage happened as a result of Canada recently shutting down its Chalk River Reactor, because of a leak. The reactor supplies almost a third of the world's isotope supplies.

With this increased spotlight on the industry and a clear need for a strong voice in the industry – Gamble said this is the perfect time to launch the organization.

"We will create and deliver important services and events that are directed at the specific needs of the diagnostic imaging and oncology community," said Gamble. "This is something that I'm passionate about and that I really believe in."