A combined force of Democrats and Republicans legislators on April 6 introduced the Lung Cancer Mortality Reduction Act of 2011, legislation that would include the creation and launch of a pilot lung screening program.

Over the past few years, health-care providers have recognized the potential of enhanced physician access to patient information to improve physician efficiencies and, in turn, patient care. For some, migrating to an integrated PACS/electronic medical record (EMR) configuration—instead of maintaining the legacy IT model in which PACS and the EMR

In the island state of Hawaii, there is a four-hospital system, based in Honolulu, called Hawaii Pacific Health (HPH), with outposts and imaging technology deployed throughout the Hawaiian archipelago. This system is served by four different radiology practices, reading approximately 300,000 studies annually.

Medicare spent too much money on imaging in 2008, paying a total of $38 million in erroneous claims for the interpretation of CT, MRI, and x-ray studies performed at hospital emergency departments, says a report issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG).

Hologic, Inc. yesterday announced that it has received U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clearance to incorporate the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) Whole Body Reference Data into its Discovery dual x-ray absorptiometry (DXA) systems. These body composition values are useful to healthcare professionals in their

The American Hospital Association (AHA) has publicly said its constituents are “deeply disappointed” by a proposed rule for fiscal 2012 issued Tuesday by the Centers For Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Effective for discharges occurring on or after October 1, 2011, the proposed rule would decrease average inpatient payments to acute-care

The Imaging e-Ordering Coalition is urging the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) to abandon its recommendation that practitioners who order high levels of imaging be required to obtain prior authorization. An alliance of providers, companies, and associations whose ranks include the American College of Radiology (ACR), the coalition

Successful integration of CDs into PACS has the potential to reduce the number of imaging studies performed in hospital emergency departments, according to a two-part study conducted at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and published in the May issue of Radiology.