In what can be seen as a cautionary tale for any hospital that trains residents, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Lebanon, N.H., has agreed to pay more than $2.2 million to settle charges that it improperly billed several federal healthcare programs, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Vermont announced yesterday. More than $80,000 of the

Royal Philips Electronics and NEC Corporation earlier this week announced the signing of an agreement under which the two companies will jointly develop and market highly integrated digital pathology solutions. Based on Philips’ new high-throughput pathology slide scanner and NEC’s e-Pathologist Cancer Diagnosis Assistance System, the solutions

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Delaware (BCBSD) has reportedly violated state law by signing a contract with Franklin, Tenn.-based radiology benefits management company MedSolutions that guaranteed the insurer would save money by denying high-tech imaging tests, such as nuclear cardiac exams, the Delaware News Journal reports.

Physician turnover has increased for the first time since 2008, according to the sixth annual Physician Retention Survey conducted by Cejka Search and the American Medical Group Association (AMGA). The survey, which takes into account responses from 62 medical organizations representing 17,624 physicians, reflects a total turnover rate of 6.1% in

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).