When vRad rolled out its latest “Look in the Mirror” Radiology Patient Care (RPCSM) Indices and Global Practice Information (GPISM) reports this past fall—the latest free-to-subscribers offerings in the company’s mushrooming analytics portfolio—CIO Shannon Werb paused to think back over his first year with the company. Driving change was the subject at hand when Werb recently took questions from imagingBiz.

Even when a technologist acquires an ideal image and a radiologist performs a thorough, accurate interpretation, imaging excellence can be negated if the results are not clearly and effectively communicated to referring doctors.

When it comes to dictating radiology reports to produce consistently presented diagnostic evaluations, Benjamin W. Strong, MD (ABR, ABIM), is bullish on two tools: (1) customized speech-to-text software, and (2) flexible diagnostic checklists. In fact, to vRad’s chief medical officer, the evolutionary integration of those two workflow aids—which he has been using himself and refining for vRad’s 500-plus radiologists over the past 10 years—is structured reporting.

As 2014 winds to a close, three of radiology's brightest thought leaders offer predictions on the year ahead. There is big power in big data. Moving forward into 2015 and beyond, how do radiology practices aggregate data in a way that creates what the world of Silicon Valley has shown us to be the new paradigm? Curtis Kauffman-Pickelle, president and CEO of The Kauffman Group and publisher of ImagingBiz, asks that very question when asked to look ahead.

The flawed Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula is a dark cloud of uncertainty that annually hangs over healthcare practitioners, threatening to trigger the government-mandated double digit cut in reimbursement rates for Medicare beneficiaries. When the temporary SGR patch was extended in April 2014 (for the 17th time), it was the inclusion of the ICD-10 delay that took healthcare by surprise and overshadowed other provisions of the Act. While the ICD-10 delay certainly warrants the attention of healthcare providers, there are other provisions included in the Protecting Access to Medicare Act (PAMA) of 2014 that deserve equal attention so that clinicians can prepare for the impending changes.

Last summer brought something of a media moment for mammography in the U.S. The spotlight shone on the star—3-D imaging for breast-cancer screening—after the Journal of the American Medical Association published a study showing that tomosynthesis, when added to digital mammography, is a natural at catching invasive cancers while exposing false positives as impostors.

When four-state Mercy broke ground on a four-story, 120,000-square-foot virtual-care center on a patch of green in Chesterfield, Mo., last spring, the blueprint represented a bold and visionary step into American healthcare’s digital future, as the center may be the first of its kind anywhere in the world. The organization estimates that the center will manage more than three million telehealth visits in the first five years following its scheduled 2015 opening.

Tomosynthesis is a relatively new type of imaging technology that utilizes x-rays to create a 3-dimensional image of the breast and is mainly used to detect and diagnose cancers. Not yet considered the standard in clinical care, most imaging centers still employ conventional digital mammograms as their primary method of detecting breast cancer. Conventional mammograms take x-rays of the breast from different angles to create cross-sectional 2-dimensional images. Imaging centers must decide if replacing existing conventional mammography systems with tomosynthesis makes sense from a clinical and financial perspective. What are some factors that drive this decision making process? Will adding this technology to your imaging center create value for shareholders?