Client story

His scanners were state of the art. A patient told him the front desk was still 1990.

Humberto Carrion co-founded 3T Radiology & Research to run the best equipment he could buy. Then a patient who flies in for high-end scans pointed out that the imaging was world-class and the check-in was paper. This is what he decided to do about it, recorded before the new intake went live.

Physician-foundedMRI, CT and PETRecorded before go-live
Humberto Carrion
Co-Founder,
3T Radiology & Research
Hear him tell it ↓
Jump to a chapter5 chapters
Practice profileIndependent, co-founded, high-end imaging
4
employees’ worth of intake work, automated
0
new hires planned to absorb it
3
modalities: MRI, CT and PET, with and without contrast
Step 1
the fax arriving: the feature that decided it
In his own words

The gap between the scanner and the sign-in sheet.

Humberto Carrion co-founded the center. He is unusually blunt about the part of it he was not proud of, which is why the diagnosis lands.

What he had
“What I currently use right now is terrible. Because we have to manually print faxes, upload, and my staff has to manually input all the patient information. That just alone is the biggest headache that I have.”
What it costs
“Too much manual errors and too much manual labor. It’s wasting patient time, because then we have to go back into the documentation and manually look at everything again and see where we’ve pulled wrong information from.”
What the patient said
“You guys have the best equipment, the best images, the best doctors, but I’m still signing in with papers. I’m still waiting a day to get a phone call. I’m not getting a text with a Google link to the address.”
The eye opener
“That was one of the big eye openers for me, when a patient who was in the tech space told me that my medical side does not match the patient experience side on the front end. So I was like, yeah, this has to change.”
What decided it
“The biggest feature was the first step. When the fax comes in, it can literally create the chart, do everything automatically, text patients and call patients and schedule them.”
Where the people go
“It does four employees’ job just from the intake side of it. But I’m not going to hire more staff, so then I can move staff around and just give a much better experience to the patient.”
Step 1
the fax arriving, the
feature that decided it
4
employees’ worth of
intake work, automated
0
new hires planned
to absorb it
01 · A center that buys the best of everything

Except at the front desk

3T Radiology & Research is built around high-end imaging: MRI, CT and PET, with and without contrast, and patients who travel to get scanned there. Humberto Carrion co-founded it and is candid about the machinery being the part they got right.

Intake was the part they did not. Faxes were printed, patient information was typed in by hand, and documents were uploaded one at a time, with the details pulled from separate forms, insurance cards and prescriptions. His word for the system he is replacing is terrible, and the specific cost he names is not staff hours but patient time: when something is keyed wrong, someone has to go back through the documentation to find where it came from.

  • MRI, CT and PET, with and without contrast
  • Faxes printed, demographics typed, documents uploaded by hand
  • Details pulled from separate forms, insurance IDs and prescriptions
  • Errors that surface late and have to be traced back
02 · The conversation that forced it

Told by a patient, not a consultant

What moved this from a known annoyance to a decision was a patient. People in the tech industry fly in for the high-end scans, and one of them said the thing out loud: the equipment, the images and the doctors are top notch, and he was still signing in on paper, still waiting a day for a phone call, still not getting a text with a link to the address.

Carrion repeats the phrase that stuck: that on the intake side it was like being in 1990. His conclusion is the useful part: the medical side of the business had stopped matching the patient-experience side, and a center that competes on being the best cannot afford a front end that argues with that.

  • The complaint came from a patient, unprompted
  • World-class imaging, paper check-in
  • A day’s wait for a phone call; no text, no link
  • A front end that contradicted the rest of the business
Why it matters
“On the medical side, you’re top notch, but on my intake side, it’s like I’m still in 1990 filling out things with paper.”
A patient of 3T Radiology & Research,
quoted by Humberto Carrion
03 · What the first step does

Everything that happens when a fax arrives

Asked what decided it, he does not name a module; he names a moment. When a fax arrives, the chart is created from it: the demographics, the insurance and the scan type read straight off the document. The patient is then texted to say the referral has been received, and an AI agent can call and offer appointment times.

He describes that sequence as doing four employees’ worth of intake work, and he is explicit about what that is for. He is not hiring fewer people; he is moving the people he has to the front of the building, sitting with patients who are anxious, walking them to the machine, staying with them during the scan. That is something the center is trying to do now and cannot staff while the same team is retyping faxes.

  • The chart created from the fax, not from typing
  • Demographics, insurance and scan type read off the document
  • The patient texted on arrival of the referral
  • An AI agent able to call and offer times
  • Four employees’ worth of intake work, and no new hires planned
04 · Why he calls it a partner

A text that knows which scan it is

The thing he keeps returning to is not the automation but the adjustability of it. He wants to change how the AI agent speaks to his patients (the tone, the speed) and he wants the text messages to be his. His summary: it is your software, but I can do whatever I want to it.

The reason that matters here is the modality mix. A PET scan, a CT with contrast and a plain MRI ask different things of a patient beforehand, so a single generic reminder is not good enough. Every patient getting the message that belongs to their own scan is, in his framing, the same patient-experience argument the whole project started from.

  • The AI agent’s tone and pace, adjustable
  • Patient texts written by the practice, not templated at them
  • Scan-specific messages instead of one size fits all
  • Configuration treated as part of the product, not a change request

What he expects it to change

Step 1
The fax arriving: chart created, patient texted, scheduling offered
Print and retype→read on arrival
What happens to an incoming order
4
employees’ worth of
intake work, automated
No new hires
to absorb the volume it takes off
Per scan
patient messaging, not one generic reminder

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match your scanners?

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