On October 6, 2009, four physicians gathered in Stamford, Connecticut, to participate in a discussion moderated by Cheryl Proval, Radinformatics.com editorial director.

The nation’s hospitals eluded a $1 billion pay cut on October 1, when the 2010 Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) went into effect, because CMS chose not to include a negative 1.9% update for payments to hospitals as originally proposed. On the other hand, imaging-technology owners in the freestanding outpatient and in-office settings are

Growth in outpatient advanced imaging has declined significantly from its peak in 2004. At that time, outpatient CT and MRI exam volumes were growing at approximately 10% each per year. From 2009 to 2013, however, imaging experts at The Advisory Board Co, Washington, DC, estimate that growth for these modalities will slow to approximately 5%

A recent New Yorker article¹ shone a harsh light on the city of McAllen, Texas, where Medicare data suggest that health care costs are nearly twice as high as the national average. Garnering less attention was the example that the author (surgeon Atul Gawande, MD, MPH) gave of a community where health care delivery functions efficiently and

A convergence of factors shaping the current health care environment—including some key regulatory changes—has caused many health systems to reevaluate their broad array of physician relationships in an effort to determine the optimal hospital–physician alignment strategy. This is particularly true of medical imaging arrangements, as hospitals

Tight credit markets may have lengthened timelines, but hospital systems across the United States continue to move aggressively into their communities to fulfill outpatient imaging strategies. The consulting group Sg2 (Chicago, Illinois) predicts 19% growth in outpatient imaging in the 10-year span between 2008 and 2018, representing 90% of total

Ernest Glad, president of Cortell Health, Dallas, Texas, sees the 2007 CMS restructuring of the DRGs used in the inpatient prospective-payment system as an opportunity that many hospitals are currently squandering. The restructuring adjusts DRG weights based on the severity of a patient’s condition to improve the system’s ability to account for the

After weathering last fall’s fiscal catastrophe, many hospital CFOs now find themselves in Bert Zimmerli’s position. Though Zimmerli is senior vice president and CFO of the only health care system in the country to receive the highest credit rating from both Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services and Moody’s Investors Service, he says that the