Business Intelligence

Providers utilize business intelligence to monitor referral patterns and collaborate with clinicians who order their services. Such analytics tools have also been deployed in the specialty to improve productivity, track patient satisfaction and bolster quality.

CMS pauses new Medicare hospice and home health provider entries for six months
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said it’s issuing a nationwide moratorium on new providers entering the spaces until it has a chance to look into allegations of fraud, waste and abuse. It confirmed investigations of various organizations are pending.
Consolidation of physician practices proceeds apace, corporatizing medicine one acquisition at a time
The days when most doctors worked in independent practice settings are fading from memory like old photoprints in a musty scrapbook.
Investor-bought PCPs carry on like nothing much has changed—with caveats
Private-equity acquisitions of primary-care provider practices neither alter hospitalization rates nor affect acute-care outcomes, according to new research out of Brown University.
12 of the top technology vendors serving children’s hospitals
Epic makes the list with its enterprise inpatient EHR and related platforms. So does PCC, aka Physician’s Computer Company, which supplies pediatric-specific ambulatory EHR and practice-management products and services.
Weight loss drugs are hiking employer healthcare prices, with 87% saying they expect costs to only go up
In a survey, employers told the Business Group on Health that they aren’t yet seeing evidence of long-term health benefits from taking GLP-1s for weight loss, leaving them unsure how to manage costs while continuing to cover them.

Notable names in the news: From Avenda and CMS to UltraSight and Whiterabbit

Developments that broke softly but may soon make waves in radiology.

U.S. News & World Report children’s hospitals cardiology heart surgery

New Orleans looks to Cleveland for pediatric coverage

Children’s Hospital New Orleans is tapping Cleveland Clinic as a way to make sure Pelican State families have ready access to board-certified pediatric radiologists.

Carestream seeking Chapter 11 protection

Radiography OEM Carestream Health Inc. has filed for voluntary Chapter 11 reorganization with a federal bankruptcy court in Delaware.

Chinese medical imaging OEM raises $1.6B on first day of trading

United Imaging Healthcare of Shanghai just became the seventh Chinese company this year to enjoy an IPO topping $1 billion—and the third best-performing of the bunch.

Notable names in the news: From AIRS Medical to Sectra and a few in between

Radiology business developments that broke softly but may soon make waves.

ACR, other groups cry foul over insurers’ methods for calculating out-of-network payments

Payers have been using rates agreed to by PCPs to justify underpaying specialists such as anesthesiologists, emergency physicians and, yes, radiologists.

Nuance and Covera join forces to improve radiology quality ‘at scale’

PowerScribe purveyor Nuance is partnering on widescale care improvement with a healthcare AI startup that made its name showing Walmart where, and where not, to send its employees for high-accuracy radiology.

Enrolling with Medicare as an IDTF? Dot i’s and cross t’s around physician supervision, advises healthcare attorney

Why does CMS allow radiologists to provide imaging supervision at an unlimited number of sites?

Business Intelligence

CMS pauses new Medicare hospice and home health provider entries for six months

Consolidation of physician practices proceeds apace, corporatizing medicine one acquisition at a time

Investor-bought PCPs carry on like nothing much has changed—with caveats

12 of the top technology vendors serving children’s hospitals

Weight loss drugs are hiking employer healthcare prices, with 87% saying they expect costs to only go up