February/March 2012

Paul J. Chang, MD, FSIIM, says, “Because of the external expectations that we will all do more in radiology with less time and fewer resources, we are now entering a maturation phase that I call image management. The emphasis, now, is on understanding what we do to help the value proposition. The key is now measurable improvement in efficiency,

By observing the quantity and quality of informatics innovation emerging from a radiology department, it is possible to identify those institutions that are nurturing the next wave of informaticists in radiology. One beacon is the University of Pennsylvania Health System (UPHS) in Philadelphia, where R. Nick Bryan, MD, PhD, is chair of radiology.

Growth in imaging utilization has led prior authorization (a 1980s health-plan strategy) to be applied to advanced imaging services. RBMs have developed increasingly complex programs to reduce imaging expenses through utilization management, credentialing, channeling to lower-cost providers, and network contracting.

The upside to Berwick being shown the door in Washington is the pleasure to be had in reading his first major talk¹ since leaving the office of CMS administrator on December 2, 2011. The occasion was the 23rd Annual National Forum on Quality Improvement in Health Care of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, held in Orlando, Florida. Berwick

Imagine that your practice has been barreling down the health-care highway for years. Now, though, there’s a T intersection straight ahead, with one route leading to completely commoditized health care and the other (the road far less traveled) leading to high-touch, high-quality care—to an experience monopoly. This is a monopoly in terms of the

Attestation for stage 1 meaningful use is underway in radiology, and expectations are rising about the ability of IT to reduce cost and increase quality in health care. In separate interviews with Radiology Business Journal, Farzad Mostashari, MD, ScM, national coordinator for health IT, and Todd Park, CTO for the US DHHS, clarify their

Imaging is increasingly pervasive in modern medicine; according to a 2011 study¹ published in Radiology, the use of CT scans in emergency-department visits has risen 16% per year since 1995, and the report estimated that the modality could have been used in 20% of emergency-department visits in 2011. Remarkably little research has been performed to

After government officials revised the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act to include hospital-based physicians practicing in outpatient settings, radiology practices began scrambling to determine what it will mean to them. IT adjustments take time and money, and practices waiting for stage 2 meaningful-use

No matter what one thinks about health-care reforms as they are currently being revealed in their entirety, implicit within any future integrated delivery system (accountable-care organization) is the understanding that turf lines will be blurred and that patient care will be much more of a team effort than one in which silos of specialists carve