Quality

The focus of quality improvement in healthcare is to bolster performance and processes related to diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. Leaders in this space also ensure the proper selection of imaging exams and procedures, and monitor the safety of services, among other duties. Reimbursement programs such as the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) utilize financial incentives to improve quality. This also includes setting and maintaining care quality initiatives, such as the requirements set by the Joint Commission.

Artificial intelligence can help make breast cancer screening mammography more accurate.

FDA highlights mammography issues at 3 radiology practices, posing ‘serious risk to human health’

The agency on March 5 issued separate alerts detailing quality challenges at imaging providers in Michigan, California and Texas. 

March 11, 2024
Cardiologist heart

Cardiac imaging use is skyrocketing, and radiologists are rising to the challenge

Over the course of a decade, the number of CT exams leapt 353% by 2022, while MRI climbed nearly 283%, researchers detailed Wednesday. 

February 29, 2024
Examples of the messages the Nanox AI algorithms display for incidental findings of spinal compression fractures and detection of coronary calcium. Both can help physicians better understand risk factors or need for therapy in patients through these types of opportunistic screenings on scans being performed for other reasons.

Routine chest CT often reveals patients at risk for cardiovascular disease, presenting radiology with ‘untapped’ potential

Rads only reported this incidental finding in about 31% to 44% of cases, experts detailed in the Journal of the American College of Radiology

February 20, 2024
Doctors have increasingly been seeing breast exams with swollen lymph nodes imitating cancer in patients who have received a vaccine, prompting Penn Medicine providers to offer up guidance. mammography mammogram breast cancer

Access isn’t enough; other unmet needs keeping patients from using screening mammography

Patients with such impediments also are more likely to present to practices with late-stage disease, experts detailed in JAMA Network Open.  

February 14, 2024
Video of Mahadevappa Mahesh, PhD, incoming-AAPM president, professor of radiology and a medical physicist, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, explains key trends in imaging physics presented at the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) 2023 meeting.

6 key trends in medical imaging physics

Mahadevappa Mahesh, PhD, incoming American Association of Physicists in Medicine president, discusses key developments in the specialty. 

February 14, 2024
The rate of radiology reading errors has not changed in 75 years, despite technology advances, explains Michael Bruno, MD, Penn State Hershey Medical Center, who outlines the reasons why.

Error rates in radiology have not changed in 75 years

Radiology report reading errors are as prevalent as ever. Michael Bruno, MD, of Penn State Hershey Medical Center says it's time for that to change.

February 13, 2024
breast radiologist breast cancer mammography

New breast imaging approach provides high sensitivity while reducing false positives: ‘Groundbreaking advancement’

Low-dose positron emission mammography is a molecular imaging technique that also can reduce radiation exposure while avoiding breast compression. 

February 12, 2024

CMS beta testing new mammography-related quality measures

The federal agency is aiming to assess radiologist performance in breast cancer screening and improve patient outcomes.

February 9, 2024

Around the web

Using CT to perform coronary artery calcium scoring on symptomatic chest pain patients can deliver significant value, according to a new data published in Radiology

Peninsula Imaging told Mary Raver in 2014 that a cancerous growth was benign. She now has 18 months to live.

The Society for Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance applauded two new CPT Category III codes for myocardial blood flow reserve (MBFR) assessments.

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