Las Vegas Cancer Patients Wait Weeks for Scan Results as Radiologist Shortage Bites

Richard Smith, a 75-year-old Las Vegas man who has battled bladder cancer since 2021 and liposarcoma for 11 years, waited 23 days to get back scan results he was told would take seven to 10 days. He canceled two doctor's appointments while he waited, unable to move forward with treatment because the imaging he relies on to track his tumors never arrived on time.

Smith's wife, Susan Smith, 67, said she was told there were no doctors available to read the scans. The delays are happening at Steinberg Diagnostic Medical Imaging, a 12-location outpatient imaging network across the Las Vegas Valley that normally returned Richard Smith's scans within a week, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which spoke to about eight people who described delayed Steinberg Diagnostic test results. Susan Smith said the scans show where her husband's tumors are and how they have progressed — information doctors need before deciding next steps for a man now managing two liposarcoma subtypes.

A Delayed MRI, Nerve Damage and a Fall Risk

The backlog has hit other patients even harder. Ken Krieger, 62, has an autoimmune disorder affecting his spine, and his doctor ordered a stat lumbar MRI on July 14 to determine whether he needed surgery. A stat MRI should have been read within 24 to 48 hours, according to Krieger, but his results weren't read until July 31 — more than two weeks later.

During that delay, Krieger said he experienced extensive nerve damage affecting his left leg, lost control over his bladder, and fell three times. He said earlier MRI results would have improved his situation. His wife, Laura Krieger, 61, said the delay lasted two and a half weeks and that she contacted Steinberg Diagnostic about it, only to reach an automated AI chatbot over the phone. She later posted a review on Yelp after sending an email complaint that went unanswered. Ken Krieger eventually had surgery scheduled for August 10, underwent a fusion to stabilize the lower part of his spine, and said he experienced an unbearable amount of pain following the operation.

Steinberg's Ownership Change and the Backlog

The delays are surfacing months after Intermountain Health, a nonprofit health system headquartered in Salt Lake City that provides hospital, primary and specialty care across the Intermountain West, completed a phased acquisition of Steinberg Diagnostic that began January 1 and finalized in January, according to Becker's Hospital Review. Steinberg Diagnostic had operated independently in Southern Nevada since 1988 with more than 550 radiologists, technologists and staff before the deal.

Intermountain Health attributed the backlog to a national shortage of radiologists and said Southern Nevada is impacted more severely by the shortage than the rest of the country, per a statement to the Review-Journal. The health system said it plans to add approximately 20 radiologists and is expediting licensure, credentialing, privileging and onboarding processes to relieve the backlog. Under Nevada law, any physician interpreting scans for patients located in Nevada — including out-of-state teleradiologists — must hold an active license from the Nevada State Board of Medical Examiners, a requirement that can slow how quickly new hires start reading local cases.

Nevada's Radiologist Shortage Runs Deep

Steinberg Diagnostic has acknowledged a backlog in some imaging results, with delays reaching up to three weeks for some patients. Nevada has the lowest number of radiologists per capita in the country, with just nine radiologists per 100,000 people, according to the 2025 Medicus report. Several Steinberg Diagnostic locations have received Yelp ratings as low as 2.7 out of five stars, with reviews complaining about wait times.

The shortage isn't unique to Steinberg Diagnostic or even to Nevada. A May 2026 national study published in the Journal of the American College of Radiology, reported by Healio, found that outpatient imaging turnaround times more than doubled over the past decade, with CT reading delays climbing over 300 percent and MRI delays rising more than 250 percent, as imaging volume outpaced clinician supply nationwide. Research from the Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute found that radiologist job turnover doubled between 2013 and 2020-2022, driven by unsustainable clinical workloads, and federal projections from the Health Resources and Services Administration anticipate radiology will operate at only 90 percent workforce adequacy relative to demand by 2038.

Nevada's Workforce Gap Compounds the Problem

Nevada ranks 45th nationally in physician coverage per capita and 50th in healthcare access, facing an estimated statewide deficit of roughly 2,500 doctors across primary and specialty fields, according to Nevada Business Magazine. The pipeline for homegrown radiologists remains thin — at UNLV Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine's March 2025 Match Day, only two graduating medical students matched into radiology residency programs, one diagnostic and one interventional, leaving Southern Nevada health systems reliant on out-of-state hiring to fill gaps.

The strain on Las Vegas radiology isn't new. Federal regulators ordered Summerlin Hospital to halt mammography services in December 2025 over image-quality deficiencies, requiring secondary radiologist reviews for patients imaged over a two-year span. Intermountain, meanwhile, is pressing ahead with a broader Southern Nevada expansion, including an $800 million, 200-bed children's hospital planned by 2030 and a 90,000-square-foot Badura outpatient clinic that opened in Las Vegas in July.

Technology Push Aims at Faster Reads

Industry players are also leaning on technology to chip away at backlogs like Steinberg's. GE HealthCare completed a $2.3 billion acquisition of imaging software firm Intelerad in March, expanding cloud-native archiving, AI tools and workflow orchestration meant to help radiology networks read scans faster. Whether such tools can catch up to demand in a state as short-staffed as Nevada remains to be seen, but for patients like Richard Smith and Ken Krieger, the wait for answers has already taken a physical toll.