Vendors Will Engage in Aggressive Price Competition to Win Public Tenders, According to Findings from Decision Resources Group BURLINGTON, Mass., Feb. 20, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Decision Resources Group finds that expansion of the European market for picture archiving and communication systems (PACS), radiology information systems (RIS) and cardiovascular information systems (CVIS) will be hindered by the debt crisis and radiology cuts in the region. The resulting budget constraints have led to deferred purchases of new and replacement PACS, RIS and CVIS for many countries in 2013, as well as the cancellation of a significant number of public tenders for these systems, particularly in the more severely affected markets in Italy and Spain.

A newly developed series of lectures, recently launched by the Patient Experience Advisory Team and sponsored by the Johns Hopkins Radiology Department, is bringing in non-medical experts to talk to hospital staff, according to a report by Johns Hopkins. The unique idea behind this series is that all of the speakers are “people experts”. From hotel executives to chefs, to the president of Disney Studios, these people offer expertise in making people happy. Elliot Fishman, a professor of radiology and oncology, planned the series of seven lectures in an attempt to get members of the Hopkins community thinking differently about patient care and patient engagement. 

With plenty of time before the March 31, deadline, California is reporting that it has already met its enrollment goals for the health insurance exchanges (HIEs). The California Department of Health Care Services announced that as of January 31, 3013, more than 1.6 million Californians have signed up for either Covered California health insurance plans, or for low cost or no cost Medi-Cal. The strong enrollment trend has extended into February with an additional 100,000 enrollments in Covered California in the first two weeks of this month.

In a recent Journal of the American College of Radiology: JACR article, 1 Richard Heller III, MD, MBA, a radiologist with Radiology Partners and chairman of radiology at Advocate Children’s Hospital in Oak Lawn, Illinois, proposed a framework for understanding radiology-group value (based on specific health-system needs). He calls it the total value equation. 

As radiology groups continue to contemplate the transition from fee-for-service to value-based medicine, the question of what constitutes value is central to their plans for the future—and unearthing the answer begins with understanding the needs of hospitals and health systems in evolution, according to Geraldine McGinty, MD, MBA, chair of the ACR® Commission on Economics.

In November 2013, Virtual Radiologic (vRad) released its initial set of radiology patient-care (RPCSM) indices, the first findings-based benchmarking measures for imaging activity and utilization based on the global practice’s clinical data repository. Jordan Halter, vice president of solutions for the company, says, “With 23 million studies and growing, vRad’s database reflects practicing radiology on a large scale. That means that we have insight that reflects the national radiology market. vRad wants to use these indices as a way to start a dialogue in radiology. Everyone must start measuring value, quality, and performance as we transition from a fee-for-volume to a fee-for-value model. Until now, nobody quite knew how.” 

In an effort to help other physicians diagnose and treat complex neurological cancers and disorders, radiology researchers at Johns Hopkins have taken collective diagnostic registries to the next level with the development of a library of children’s brain images. The image databank, being used today by doctors at Johns Hopkins, currently houses 7,000 brain images of Hopkins patients, and should be publicly available in three years, according to Thierry Huisman, MD, a professor of radiology, neurology, and pediatrics and the director of pediatric radiology and neuroradiology at the Hopkins Children's Center, via an announcement from Johns Hopkins.

Despite hopes for high enrollment through the health-insurance exchanges (HIEs) of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), the numbers are well below forecast levels as the March 31 enrollment deadline approaches.