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.

Medical-image Archiving: Concerns, Methods, and Emerging Solutions

It’s no secret that health-care IT professionals are struggling to keep up with the storage demands placed on them by medical imaging. As imaging utilization continues to increase and the amount of data associated with a single image set continues to rise, maintaining a patient’s radiological history (as mandated by HIPAA) becomes more costly and

Strategic-planning Meetings for Radiology Groups: Best Practices

MMP

In today’s challenging business environment, it is more critical than ever before that radiology groups engage in strategic planning. Ironically, the same factors that make strategic planning so necessary to a group’s survival also make it difficult to dedicate resources to the process. Those practices that do carve out the necessary time will see

State of the Specialty: Imaging’s Research Crisis

Radisphere

Radiology has been in the regulatory crosshairs for almost six years, ever since the DRA eliminated billions in reimbursements for imaging—and the profession can expect the trend to continue, if it doesn’t invest in research now. That’s the contention of Christoph I. Lee, MD, a UCLA Robert Wood Johnson Foundation clinical scholar, and Howard P.

We’ve Seen This Movie Before

I know many radiologists who are trying—desperately, in some cases—to see how their group practices can fit neatly within what will eventually be defined as accountable-care organizations (ACOs). I say eventually because I have seen no true outline of how an ACO will work in real time, in the real world, or in any organization with which I have

Group Alleges Critical Omission From Imaging Agent Study

U.S. consumer group Public Citizen is alleging that researchers with ties to Eli Lilly and Co. withheld from the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) important information that should have been included in a study of Amyvid (florbetapir), an imaging agent for Alzheimer’s disease. Published on January 19, the study assessed the

ACR Introduces Dose Index Registry

The American College of Radiology (ACR) has launched the Dose Index Registry (DIR), a vehicle to which medical imaging facilities can submit anonymized dose information for all CT exams performed and compare their dose indices to those of other facilities of similar size or geographic area as well as to national benchmarks. Participating facilities

Technology Receives Modular EHR Certification

INFINITT North America, a provider of image and information management solutions for healthcare, yesterday announced that its INFINITT G3 RIS/PACS system has been tested and certified as meeting the Modular EHR requirements for ambulatory settings, in accordance with ONC-ATCB certification criteria. Certification by an ATCB (Authorized Testing and

HHS: Few Uninsured Patients Can Afford Hospital Bills

Few families without health insurance have the financial assets to pay potential hospital bills, reveals a new report released today by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). On average, the report says, uninsured families can only afford to pay in full for approximately 12% of hospital stays they may experience--bills that account