When Christopher Garcia, MD, MHS, completed his post-residency fellowship in 2015, he was looking forward to kickstarting his career in radiology. As he considered the variety of job opportunities before him—joining a private practice, working at a hospital—one option made more sense than any others: reading remotely from ­­­­the comfort of his Connecticut home as a teleradiologist.  

The COVID crisis has showcased for a worldwide audience telehealth’s potential for bringing top-notch medical care wherever it’s needed. Safety-minded Americans have registered their approval by voting with their screens: The CDC reported a 154% jump in telehealth visits during the last week of March 2020 vs. the same week in 2019.

As 2020 comes to a close, radiologists find their profession at a major crossroads. AI and other game-changing technologies are rapidly evolving, government policies are forcing practices to rethink their business models, and a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic continues to cause chaos for the entire healthcare industry. 

With the deal complete, the El Segundo, California-based practice now employs some 2,400 radiologists in all 50 states, reading roughly 35 million exams annually. 

The 2021 National Defense Authorization Act now moves on to President Trump, who has indicated his plans to veto the bill for non-healthcare reasons.

Researchers found that a simple three-part intervention could help patients feel more at ease about their results. 

At their peak, virtual consults accounted for 22.8 mean weekly visits at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, physicians explained.

The study’s authors tracked data from more than 13,000 patients with malignant melanoma and more than 25,000 patients with lung cancer.

New Technology Add-On Payments (NTAP) are a class of reimbursement that are meant to help pay for new technology that is not included in the DRG bundled payment. Specifically, NTAP recognizes that current DRG payment rates can be a barrier to adopting new technology and represents an additional payment for hospital stays that use new technology determined by CMS to provide substantial clinical improvement and where the current DRG payment would be inadequate.

With a mission to provide best-in-class clinical interpretation solutions, Digisonics provides over 2,000 active users a vendor neutral platform that consolidates multiple systems to optimize the physician workflow and ultimately improve patient care.