Experts have long charged that the practice of interventional radiology should be clinical in nature, with dedicated space and infrastructure. One imaging department, however, is talking the talk, building a thriving interventional oncology service line steered by rads that tallied $1.1 million-plus in revenue, according to an analysis published Wednesday.
This movement toward a clinical IR model has grown even more important as the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services this year increased reimbursement for evaluation and management services. NYU Langone Health has built its own such service line in which radiologists are responsible for ongoing patient care including E/M, interventional oncology procedures, and imaging before and afterward.
Analyzing financial data from the service from a 22-month period, researchers found a strong financial picture. That included 16,613 work relative value units and nearly 600 procedures on 281 patients treated, experts detailed in the Journal of Vascular and Interventional Radiology.
“Clinical [interventional oncology] provides opportunity to collect otherwise uncaptured E/M revenue and impact downstream imaging revenue, thus reinforcing IR as a clinical rather than purely procedural specialty,” corresponding author Ryan Hickey, MD, an assistant professor of radiology and director of interventional oncology at NYU Langone, and colleagues wrote Feb. 24. “The authors hope this study provides a framework for IRs to characterize and understand revenue sources for their clinical service lines.”
To reach their conclusions, Hickey et al. analyzed all patient cases that involved an IO procedure between July 2017 and April 2019. Hepatocellular carcinoma was the most common malignancy treated (77%), while radioembolization (40.6%) and MAA mapping (37%) were the most common procedures.
Meanwhile, procedures captured the most revenue during the study period (nearly $696,000 or 63%), followed by diagnostic imaging ($322,000 or 29%) and office visits ($89,000 or 8%). Median individual patient wRVU was 50.7 with revenue of $3,500.
You can read the entire pre-proof research letter in JVIR here.
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.