The annual list of the Most Wired U.S. hospitals from Hospitals & Health Networks, numbering 289 this year, offers both reason to cheer and evidence of roadblocks in the nation’s effort to tech-up its health-care system.

According to ACR analysis, the 2014 Medicare Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment System (HOPPS) proposal released July 8 could cut hospital outpatient CT and MRI reimbursement by 18% to 38%

Although CMS could have proposed creating a 50% multiple procedure payment reduction (MPPR) on the professional component of advanced imaging (like in 2011), or elected to expand the MPPR to all forms of imaging, it decided to drop the issue instead

A survey of 742 parents of children with head injuries being treated in Canadian emergency departments found that 52% said they did not know that a CT scan could increase their child’s risk of developing cancer

Advocates for Medicare coverage of PET amyloid-beta imaging to confirm or rule out Alzheimer’s Disease had hoped for broad coverage, but in the end, the draft CMS decision memo only approved the test as part of coverage with evidence development (CED), a narrowly defined type of coverage that will take time to implement

Bridgeport Hospital, a private, not-for-profit acute care hospital, has acquired radiology services provided at three locations of Robert D. Russo, MD and Associates Radiology in Bridgeport and Stratford, Conn., for an undisclosed sum

UnitedHealth, the nation’s largest insurer, told California state regulators that it would leave the California individual health insurance market, effective at the close of 2013. A similar move by Aetna last month leaves a combined 58,000 Californians shopping for coverage in a market that does not include the nation’s two largest insurance companies, according to an article in the Los Angeles Times.

H.R. 2545, a bill to create an “independent” panel to advise on the relative value of physician services, repeats old and invalid criticisms of the Relative Value Scale Update Committee (RUC) said Geraldine B. McGinty, MD, chair of the ACR’s Commission on Economics and a member of the RUC