CMS released the 2011 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (MPFS) in July, proposing myriad changes that CMS notes would result in a 6% payment cut for radiology services. That reduction doesn’t include the impact of the 23% cut that will take place on December 1, when this year’s temporary 2.2% payment update expires—or the additional 6.1% cut

Recent media coverage of a radiologist’s accusations of inaccuracy against Radisphere National Radiology Group, Cleveland, Ohio, returns the question of quality to the forefront of discussion in the radiology community. ImagingBiz spoke with Frank Seidelmann, DO, chief innovation officer and clinical director of neuroradiology for Radisphere, both

For nearly a year and a half following the passage of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, the medical community had one question on its mind: What constitutes meaningful use? The HITECH legislation stresses that in order to receive stimulus funding for health IT, providers must prove meaningful use of

The following is not a trick question: What does the US Army’s legendary 82nd Airborne Division have in common with today’s medical-imaging profession? On the surface, probably not a lot; beneath the surface, however, I’ve seen quite a bit that our profession can learn from the focus, precision, and ethos of one of the finest US organizations. This

The road to PACS perfection is paved with distractions and pitfalls, Paul Chang, MD, FSIIM, says. Chang is professor of radiology, vice chair of radiology informatics, and medical director of enterprise imaging at University of Chicago Medical Center in Illinois. During the 2010 Dwyer Lecture, “The Role of Imaging Informatics in the Next Generation

The radiology department at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), Boston, Massachusetts, developed a policy for communicating critical and discrepant results after the Joint Commission made communications among caregivers a national priority for health-care providers. When the goal was expanded in 2007, the department took the next step and used IT

The San Francisco General Hospital/University of California–San Francisco Department of Radiology has created a groundbreaking communications tool called Radiologue. Alexander V. Rybkin, MD, a radiologist in that department, described the system in “A Web-based Flexible Communication System in Radiology,” which he presented in Minneapolis,

Integration has been a buzzword in the radiology community for some time, and the team at Valhalla, New York-based Westchester Medical Center (WMC) knows why. “We used to have PACS, RIS, and voice recognition all working separately from one another,” Mike Seiler, director of radiology IT at WMC, explains. “Today, they’re all tightly integrated. We