Save Our Sonographers: 

Stop the Silence. Stop the Rising Dues. Say No to Time-Wasting MOC — Ultrasound is Proven on the Job, Not Through Online Quizzes.

We’re the hands and hearts behind every ultrasound. Diagnostic Medical Sonographers are the professionals who scan your unborn baby, check your heart, and detect life-threatening blood clots. We help save lives every day — but the organizations we are required to pay in order to work are failing us.

Here’s the truth:

• Over $20 million of ARDMS’s yearly revenue comes directly from sonographers through exam and registration fees.

$ 9 Million/year in Registration renewals 

$10 Million/Year in application & Exam fees

$ 9.5 Million/Year in Salaries 

• The CEO of ARDMS’s parent organization, Inteleos, earns over $500K a year — with steady increases year after year.  Along with $9 Million spent on yearly salaries. 

• Meanwhile, our dues keep rising while sonographers’ wages stay stagnant, workloads are dangerously high, and workplace injuries are increasing. On top of this, ARDMS continues to pile on unnecessary requirements to maintain credentials—burdens not seen in any other healthcare professions.

ARDMS exists to uphold a credential that is technically voluntary but functionally mandatory for employment. We pay every year to keep it — yet there is no public breakdown of how those dues are used to protect us, improve working conditions, or advance our profession.

We’re funding a system that gives us little in return. While executives take raises, we scan more patients in less time, risking injury and burnout. We face unsafe workloads, no scan-time protections, and little advocacy — all while being charged more and more to keep working.

 

The newly imposed Maintenance of Certification (MOC) skill assessments are an unnecessary burden on sonographers who are already required to earn continuing medical education (CMEs) within a strict three-year cycle. ARDMS claims these assessments are “for patient safety,” yet the true measure of our skill lies in the thousands of scans we perform on the job—not in answering contrived online questions. Sonography is a hands-on, skills-based profession, and mastery is demonstrated daily in clinical practice, not through repeated testing. These additional requirements are especially unreasonable for sonographers who hold multiple registries, forcing them to jump through redundant hoops for each credential. No other allied health professionals—nurses, radiology technologists, respiratory therapists—are subjected to this type of ongoing re-testing. They maintain competence through CMEs and state licensure, and that should be sufficient for sonographers as well. We refuse to accept yet another redundant requirement that wastes valuable time without adding measurable improvements to patient outcomes

We demand:

1. Stop increasing our dues until full financial transparency is provided.

2. Full public accounting — Publish annual reports showing exactly where sonographer fees are spent.

3. Oversight & accountability — Create a member-led committee to review budgets and spending.

4. Direct reinvestment — Fund legislative efforts for workload regulation, workplace safety, and fair pay.

5. Rebalance priorities — Executive pay should not grow while members’ needs are ignored.

6. End Redundant MOC Requirements – Eliminate the time-wasting MOC skill assessments. Sonographers already maintain CMEs and demonstrate their expertise daily through hands-on patient care. These redundant assessments mock our profession and add bureaucracy without improving outcomes.

Why this matters:

If you or your loved one has ever had an ultrasound, your health depended on a sonographer being able to do their job well. But when sonographers are overworked, under-supported, and pushed to exhaustion — patients suffer too.

We are not asking for special treatment. We are asking for fairness, transparency, and a halt to unnecessary dues increases until ARDMS proves they are using our money to protect and strengthen the profession.

■Sign now to tell ARDMS and Inteleos:

Show us where our money goes — end time-wasting MOC requirements — and start standing with the sonographers who stand for you.

 

Tax Exempt Organization Search. https://apps.irs.gov/app/eos/