A national need for imaging specialists inspired health science educators at UT Health San Antonio to quickly launch a new master’s program focused on imaging sciences.
Program director Laura Vasquez studied the need at local hospitals last year, zooming in on University Health System, Methodist Hospital and the South Texas Veterans Health Care System, which together had more than 250 openings for medical imaging technologists in computerized tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and radiography locally.
And the numbers are even higher this year, she said.
“That gave me a good idea of what was happening. We have a severe shortage nationwide, but it is even greater in Texas,” Vasquez said, affecting health outcomes.
The program is a part of UT Health’s School of Health Professions and condenses three certifications in CT, MRI and radiography — which would typically take six years to obtain — into two years and also teaches students health ethics. The program doesn’t require any medical certifications or previous experience, but requires science and math prerequisites to get in.
Graduates will be able to work as either advanced CT, MRI or radiography technologists in San Antonio, or all three at once since they’ll have the necessary training to operate several different medical imaging machines that get pictures inside the body.
Students in the class say they needed a graduate program like this one because it allows them to get certified in all three areas instead of having to pick one, meaning more career opportunities in different areas of health care and higher salaries. It also provides the experience they need to get into medical school, if they choose to pursue their doctorates.
“This is exactly what I wanted to do. I like that its focused on three different radiography, because first of all, I didn’t know if I wanted to do one specifically. With this, I have options,” said Mayra Lopez, an El Paso native and UTSA biology graduate who is a current imaging sciences master’s student.
Lopez said medical school wasn’t the route for her yet, so she enrolled into the program to start getting experience and start working with patients so that by the time she’s in medical school, she’ll know more.
The new program welcomed its first cohort of 20 students in August — and there’s a waitlist for next year already, Vasquez said. Its first class will graduate in the summer of 2025.
St. Phillips College and the Baptist Health System School of Health Professions have two-year certification programs that award associate degrees for radiography, but if the student wants to earn CT or MRI certifications, those require additional years to advance into higher certifications to operate more medical imaging machines.
A shortage of imaging specialists
The need for advanced imaging technologists was there before the COVID-19 pandemic, said Vasquez, and the pandemic only sped up retirement for those in the field, leading to increased shortages, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics.
The agency also projects that there will be about 15,700 openings for radiologic and MRI technologists each year on average over the upcoming decade.
In Texas, a state that has more disadvantaged socioeconomic populations, access to care is concentrated in urban areas and contributes to the shortage being worse, Vasquez said.
Lack of access to quality education is contributing to the shortage of advanced imaging technologists, Vasquez said. In Texas, certification programs for radiology offer students an associate’s degree, and bigger cities offer bachelor’s and master’s degrees in medical imaging geared toward radiologists — but those require medical credentials or certifications, making UT Health San Antonio’s program unique.
Tofique Nizamani, a health economics graduate, relocated to San Antonio from Houston just for the master’s program because he couldn’t find programs other than certifications, associates and bachelor’s studies.
“I had already gotten my bachelor’s. I wanted higher education,” he said. “Radiology is one of the areas where you could work 24/7, other than nurses and doctors.”
All applicants must complete 26 credit hours of specific science prerequisites to be eligible for admission. There are students who are currently taking those prerequisites to get into the program, Vasquez said.
Tuition for the new master’s program under the UT Health School of Health Professions starts at $22,000 per year. There are a number of scholarships open for students studying health professions at UT Health San Antonio.
Graduates of the program will become advanced radiographers in emergency rooms, or advanced CT technologists and advanced MRI technologists in clinics, for example. On average, radiographer technologists earn $61,900 a year; CT techs earn about $63,710 a year and MRI technologists earn about $74,690 annually.
Community effects
For patients in San Antonio, the need for imaging specialists looks like longer wait times to have an MRI done, or reroutes to clinics or emergency rooms that do have qualified technologist there to conduct the scan.
“If you call right now to get a CT scan, you might have to wait a month — for an MRI, you may have to wait three months,” Vasquez said, adding that patients with health conditions are prioritized. “The sooner we fill the void, the sooner everyone can start getting treated.”
Underserved clinics struggling to fill positions often take on lower qualified technologists they cross-train to do X-rays, Vasquez said, but using a technologist who is not well-qualified could mean missed diagnoses and worse health outcomes.
UT Health San Antonio has plans to open a new five-story 108,000-square-foot outpatient and surgery center at Kyle Seale Parkway on 1604 in spring 2024, adding four CT scanners and four MRI scanners to detect health conditions like dementia and tumors.
Next year, UT Health San Antonio will open the new $430 million UT Health San Antonio Multispecialty and Research Hospital, widening the local need for even more medical imaging technologists, like radiolographers, CT technologists and MRI technologists.
“It’s a huge need. We’re concerned about these shortages, and what are we going to do once these two new facilities open? How are you going to staff those departments?” Vasquez said. “Who is going to run these scanners? They’re going to probably take the technologists we have here at the [UT Health Medical Arts & Research Center] and put them there, but then who do we put there?”
During the program, students will train in person at UT Health’s Research Imaging Institute at McDermott, UT Health De Zavala clinic and at the UT Health Health Hill Country clinic.
“A lot of our patients we have here come from all over Texas, a lot of the southern border towns in Texas where they don’t have access to care, so they come here,” Vasquez said. “It would be nice if our technologists end up working in those areas where there’s maybe one hospital, but now you have a technologist that can do all three modalities.”
But the inaugural class isn’t quite there yet. In the classroom on Thursday, students studied organs and bones on digital cadavers on high-tech Anatomage tables, similar to life-sized digital tablets that show students 3D anatomy of the human body.
As well as taking the images, Vasquez teaches her students to identify conditions to communicate to doctors what they see: “Our students aren’t MDs, but that doesn’t mean they can’t recognize the pathology,” she said. “Now you’ve accelerated or started the process of patient care.”
At least 25 students will start the master’s program in fall 2024. Over time, the program will incrementally allow more students in.
Medical imaging technologist aren’t the only current shortage in the health profession.
Researchers say there’s a national shortage of health care workers in general, including midwives, nurses and physicians. The American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC) predicts a shortage of as many as 122,000 physicians by 2032. Strategies to restore the health care workforce include making health care degrees more accessible and available.
