The Colmar Story: Building and Sustaining a High-Volume IR Department in a Peripheral Hospital

Hopitaux Civils de Colmar is situated in the picturesque town of Colmar in the northeastern part of France, close to Germany. The current structure exists since 1937, and now boasts around 1,400 beds and is considered amongst the largest non-university hospitals in France. In 2017, prior to the arrival of a full-time interventional radiologist (IR), around 1970 procedures were performed in the department by diagnostic radiologists, mostly comprising small procedures under local anesthesia. After the arrival of a full-time IR mid 2018, there was a spurt in activity to more than 4100 procedures by end of 2021. Today, the department consists of a dedicated and motivated team of 1 full-time IR and 3 visiting IRs with a dedicated IR residency program. It offers diverse therapeutic services encompassing nearly the whole spectrum of image-guided interventions (including advanced procedures under general anesthesia). The number of emergency procedures transferred to the nearby university hospital of Strasbourg has gone down from more than 150 in 2017 to around 10 per year. It reads like a successful story, but what were the key factors in building an IR service catering to the needs of most clinical branches? …