Case Studies

Radiology has been hit hard by reimbursement cuts and regulations but the cutting-edge tools available are helping practices stay ahead of all the changes impacting the market.

When Keyur Sathe, MHA, decided to put his nearly two decades of healthcare leadership and entrepreneurialism to work in a bold new venture—one that would, in his words, help “bend the arc of healthcare” toward greater value—he didn’t have to look far for inspiration.

Secure Direct Messaging capabilities have become must-have components for many if not most users of RIS and PACS. While Meaningful Use’s requirements around the technology have spurred much of the adoption, Direct Messaging has grown in popularity by its own merits.

The pace of consolidation in the medical imaging industry, which could be accurately described as feverish from 2010 to 2013, has cooled.

With more than one million patient contacts each year, Lee Memorial Health System considers patient engagement the order of the day every day. For Mike Smith, CIO of the six-hospital, 1,423-bed organization based in Fort Myers, Fla., this enterprise-wide emphasis means constantly working to ramp up IT-enabled interactions via—among other interfaces—an increasingly in-demand patient portal.

When we look at the future of PET, we think of new biomarkers and applications. Is conventional FDG PET maxed out? Or is there room to improve now? No it is not, and yes there is, molecular imaging experts say.

When the dust settles from all the recent activity and changes in the healthcare environment, it will soon become clear that there has been a major shift in the way healthcare is practiced, measured, and compensated.

Among the many requirements a hospital must meet to achieve and maintain the designation of Critical Access Hospital (CAH), the hospital must be fairly remote and furnish 24-hour emergency care services seven days a week, using either on-site or on-call staff.

On October 1, 2014, healthcare practices will be required to use a revised version of the International Classification of Diseases code: ICD-10.

Welcome to the results of the sixth annual radiology-group survey. Recently, I had lunch (at a conference on health care’s future) with the former CEO of a large teleradiology company, and he asked how radiology groups were responding to changes in the marketplace. Over the years, we had discussed that we both felt that radiology groups would get larger and that we would see national radiology groups, in the future. The question was never whether this would happen—but rather, when. I think that the answer is either soon or now.