Platform & software · Critical results communication

Critical Results Communication Software for Radiology and Critical Test Results Management

The short answer

Critical results communication software delivers an urgent imaging finding to the ordering clinician, escalates it when nobody acknowledges it in time, and keeps a timestamped record of who was told and when. The established radiology product is PowerScribe Critical Results (formerly Veriphy, now Microsoft). None of these tools holds an FDA clearance and none publishes a price; federal purchases of Veriphy have a median of $64,161.

A radiologist sees a tension pneumothorax at 2 a.m. The read is done in four minutes. What follows can take an hour: paging the ED, holding on a switchboard, leaving a voicemail for a hospitalist who has gone off shift, then typing "discussed with Dr. X at 02:47" into the impression from memory. When that call never connects, the finding was right and the patient was still harmed.

That gap is what critical results communication software is bought to close, and it is a buying decision with a compliance deadline attached. Since January 1, 2026 the Joint Commission requirement lives under National Performance Goal NPG.01.02.01 (the old NPSG.02.03.01), and a surveyor asks for two things: your written procedure, and evidence that you measure how long reporting actually takes. This page compares the products US radiology departments and imaging centers actually buy for that, with the FDA record and the federal contract prices we could verify, and shows where an AI assistant that flags the finding in the first place fits in front of them.

The Reading Station

Assistant ready

Worklist

Not for diagnostic use

Structured report

Draft

Run the assistant to draft this report for review.

You review & sign

Decision support. The radiologist reviews and signs every study.

Drafted in · you review & sign Worklist re-prioritized

Decision support for qualified clinicians. Radiological.ai does not provide a diagnosis and is not a substitute for professional judgment.

Run the assistant

Flag · prioritize · draft · you review and sign

X-RAY CT MRI BUILT WITH RADIOLOGISTS

Decision support not a diagnosis

You review & sign

Critical results software only starts working once someone has decided a finding is critical. On a busy overnight list that decision is made in whatever order the studies happen to be read, which is why worklist prioritization sits upstream of it: the suspected pneumothorax gets read in minute four rather than minute forty. The assistant that does the flagging is described on the AI triage for radiology page.

Non-urgent findings that need follow-up imaging in three or six months are a different workflow with different software, covered in radiology follow-up recommendation tracking software. If you are choosing the platform the report itself is written in, start with the radiology reporting software comparison.

Side by side

Five critical results products compared on what actually differs

All five can send a message and log a reply. The rows below are where they genuinely differ for a radiology department.

What you are comparing	PowerScribe Critical Results	peerVue qiVue	Vocera Engage	PerfectServe	eRAD RADAR
Who owns it today	Microsoft, through Nuance (Veriphy was built by Vocada, bought by Nuance in 2007)	Bought by McKesson in 2012; a 2015 federal record for the product now lists Change Healthcare, which Optum acquired in 2022. Confirm the current owner at quote stage.	Stryker, since February 2022	PerfectServe	eRAD
Built for radiology?	Yes, and it runs inside PowerScribe or on its own	Yes, alongside peer review and ED discrepancy communication	No, general clinical messaging that also routes critical lab and imaging results	No, clinician scheduling and messaging with a radiology results integration	Yes, part of the eRAD RIS and PACS family
Closed loop with acknowledgement	Delivery, verification of receipt and documentation, with rule-based escalation	Yes	Yes, with escalation paths and presence-based routing	Yes, and it can send the clinician acknowledgement back to PowerScribe	Tracks an alert from creation to confirmation by text, phone or email
FDA 510(k) clearance	None	None	None	None	None for RADAR
Published price	No	No	No	No	No
Federal purchase record	7 awards citing Veriphy, $964,146 total, median $64,161, all through resellers	2 VA awards to peerVue directly, 2011 and 2012, $24,756 total	Not reviewed for this page	Not reviewed for this page	Not reviewed for this page
The honest case against it	Strongest if you already dictate in PowerScribe, less obvious if you are leaving it	Ownership trail is unclear, so ask who supports it for the next five years	You buy a hospital-wide platform to solve a radiology problem	Best when the problem is reaching the right on-call clinician, not documenting radiology policy	Most natural for sites already on eRAD

Ownership comes from acquisition announcements (Nuance and Vocada 2007, Microsoft and Nuance March 2022, McKesson and peerVue February 2012, Stryker and Vocera February 2022). FDA rows were checked against the openFDA 510(k) database by applicant and device name on October 14, 2026. Federal figures are USAspending.gov prime awards, award types A to D, every recipient name and description read individually.

What the public record shows

Federal purchases of critical results software you can check

No vendor in this category publishes a price, so federal contract awards are the only checkable figures. Veriphy is bought through resellers, which is why searching the recipient name alone returns nothing.

Award	Amount and start	What it tells a buyer
FA304711F0917, Veriphy license, Department of Defense, via EC America	$342,860, September 2011	A full enterprise license is a six-figure purchase
VA26015F4715, peer review enterprise system with critical results, VA, via Carahsoft	$300,448, September 2015	Critical results is often bought bundled with peer review
VA24414C3779, Veriphy host support, VA, via Agfa HealthCare	$255,357, December 2013	Hosting and support is its own line, close to the license price
Veriphy perpetual annual exam volume license, Department of Defense, via MicroTechnologies	$210,164, September 2015	Licensing scales with exam volume, so bring your annual study count to the quote
All 7 Veriphy awards together	$964,146 total, median $64,161	The median is the realistic order of magnitude for a single site renewal

Source: USAspending.gov prime awards, award types A to D, fiscal 2009 to 2026, searched by keyword "veriphy", keyword "critical results" and recipient "peerVue", pulled October 14, 2026. Two teleradiology service awards that matched the keyword were read and discarded.

Why it works

What your group gets with critical results communication

The Joint Commission asks for a procedure and a measurement

NPG.01.02.01 says the hospital reports critical results of tests and diagnostic procedures on a timely basis. Element of performance 1 requires written procedures defining what counts as critical, by whom and to whom results are reported, and the acceptable time between availability and reporting. Element 2 requires you to evaluate timeliness. Software matters because element 2 is very hard to prove from free-text impressions.

The ACR wants proof the message was received

The ACR Practice Parameter for Communication of Diagnostic Imaging Findings, revised in 2025, accepts electronic communication as long as it documents that the message was delivered and acknowledged. It also asks for the date and time, the method and the name of the person told. A one-way page or an unread inbox message does not meet that bar, which is the real case for a closed loop.

There is no FDA path here, so buy on integration

openFDA returns no 510(k) clearance for Veriphy, PowerScribe Critical Results, peerVue, Vocera or Rad AI as a communication tool. That is expected: these products move messages rather than interpret images. The questions that separate them are integration questions: does it read the result from your reporting system automatically, does it know who is on call, and does the acknowledgement write back to the report.

What it handles

Flagged, prioritized and drafted for your review

The assistant pre-reads each study, surfaces a region of interest for review, re-prioritizes the worklist, and drafts the structured report in your template. You confirm, edit and sign.

Flags suspected critical findings such as pneumothorax or intracranial hemorrhage as studies arrive
Moves flagged studies to the top of the worklist so they are read first
Drafts the structured report, including the communication statement your policy requires
Works in front of the critical results tool you already run, with no replacement
Radiologist reviews, edits and signs every report

CRITICAL RESULTS COMMUNICATION STAT

Region of interest flagged for review

A focal region is surfaced on the sample study for the radiologist to review. The assistant does not characterize it as a diagnosis.

Draft impression

Suspected finding flagged for radiologist review. Correlate clinically and confirm. Draft for review and sign-off.

Decision support · not for diagnostic use You review & sign

Why Radiological.ai

One assistant across the whole read

Not three vendors stitched together. Flag, prioritize and draft in one calm pane, on X-ray, CT and MRI, with the radiologist signing every study.

Flags suspected findings

A second set of eyes surfaces regions of interest for review on every study, so a suspected finding is less likely to slip past late in a shift.

Prioritizes the worklist

Suspected-critical studies move to the top, so urgent reads surface ahead of routine follow-ups across your sites and shifts.

Drafts the report

A structured draft arrives in your template, ready to edit and sign. The draft saves the typing and the measuring, never the judgment.

Good questions

Questions about critical results communication

It is the process of getting an urgent or unexpected imaging finding to the clinician who can act on it, quickly enough to matter, and documenting that it happened. The ACR describes three triggers: findings that need immediate intervention such as a pneumothorax or a misplaced tube, findings that differ from an earlier read, and significant unexpected findings that may worsen.

For a department already dictating in PowerScribe, PowerScribe Critical Results is the path of least resistance because it reads the finding from the report and runs the closed loop in one system. Hospitals that already run Vocera or PerfectServe for clinical messaging often route radiology results through that instead. eRAD RADAR suits eRAD sites. Compare them on integration, not on the message screen.

Software is not required, but the outcome is. NPG.01.02.01 requires written procedures for critical results and an evaluation of how timely reporting is. A small site can meet that with phone calls and a log. Larger departments buy software because measuring timeliness across thousands of calls by hand is where audits fail.

No vendor publishes a price. Federal contract records give the clearest benchmark: seven awards that cite Veriphy total $964,146 with a median of $64,161, and the largest is $342,860 for a Department of Defense license. Expect licensing to scale with annual exam volume and hosting to be its own line.

Veriphy was not replaced, it was renamed. Nuance bought its maker, Vocada, in 2007 and sold it as PowerScribe Critical Results and PowerConnect Actionable Findings. Since Microsoft completed its purchase of Nuance in March 2022, the product sits in the Microsoft health portfolio, and older nuance.com product pages now redirect there.

It is the Joint Commission National Performance Goal that took over the critical results requirement on January 1, 2026, when the National Patient Safety Goals were replaced. The wording is that the hospital reports critical results of tests and diagnostic procedures on a timely basis, with written procedures and a timeliness evaluation as the elements of performance.

Yes, but at a different step. Communication software only starts once a radiologist has called a finding critical. An AI assistant shortens the time before that, by flagging a suspected critical finding when the study arrives and moving it up the worklist. The two are complementary: one finds it sooner, the other proves it was delivered.

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