Over the past few years, health-care providers have recognized the potential of enhanced physician access to patient information to improve physician efficiencies and, in turn, patient care. For some, migrating to an integrated PACS/electronic medical record (EMR) configuration—instead of maintaining the legacy IT model in which PACS and the EMR

Access to clinical history is of utmost importance to the radiologists of The Children’s Hospital in Denver, Colorado. Because the hospital’s main campus and five satellite sites generate around 130,000 pediatric images a year, it’s critical for radiologists to be able to access a patient’s indications and background quickly, while maintaining the

In the island state of Hawaii, there is a four-hospital system, based in Honolulu, called Hawaii Pacific Health (HPH), with outposts and imaging technology deployed throughout the Hawaiian archipelago. This system is served by four different radiology practices, reading approximately 300,000 studies annually.

Results of a study¹ released in Chicago, Illinois, during the 2010 annual conference of the RSNA confirm what many in both the radiology and emergency-medicine communities already knew: Utilization of imaging in the emergency department has exploded. According to the Radiology study,¹ emergency-department visits that included CT imaging increased

As the trend of consolidation among imaging centers continues, RadNet, Inc (Los Angeles, California) is at the leading edge, having added 24 freestanding outpatient centers in 2010 alone. The company, founded in 1984, today owns and/or operates a network of more than 200 quality-oriented, cost-effective facilities, and it is poised to continue

On April 1, 2011, the DHHS released its proposed new rules for accountable-care organizations (ACOs), putting in motion provisions of the health-reform package aimed at improving patient care through better coordination among providers. With the ACO program set to launch in January 2012—following a period during which stakeholders can comment on

There are multiple factors that might lead a radiology group to consider restructuring, but the majority of changes to a group’s governance are prompted by breakdowns in communication. This issue becomes particularly prevalent as groups expand; a single-site, hospital-based group of radiologists is able to handle critical decision making in a

This article is the first in a four-part series on health-care reform’s impact on radiology.