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.

Scenario Planning for Health-care Organizations

If you’re not scenario planning, you’re not planning. This bold assertion, issued in a recent white paper by GE Healthcare, is the driving philosophy behind the company’s $6 billion healthymagination initiative, and is an approach that it hopes to spread among health-care organizations. Survival in the health-care industry demands scenario-based

New Requirements for Documenting Imaging Orders

CMS published an interim final rule (with a comment period) on May 5, implementing several changes to the Medicare and Medicaid programs mandated by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). In the interim final rule, CMS exercised its discretion in expanding the requirements of the legislation in ways significant to imaging centers

Radiology’s New Normal

Don’t think that you are alone if the current uncertainty in virtually all aspects of medical imaging is driving you to distraction. Today’s radiology marketplace/profession has become increasingly complex, hypercompetitive, and extremely tense; the traditional relationships are in a constant state of flux. As much as I would like to tell you that

ACR Task Force Reports on Hospital-Radiologist Relations

As tensions between radiology groups and hospitals mount nationwide, in some cases leading to contract terminations, it’s increasingly critical for radiology practices to build successful relationships with the hospitals they serve. In the June issue of JACR: The Journal of the American College of Radiology, the ACR’s Task Force on Relationships

ACR Jumps Into Breech, Offers Radiologic–Pathology Correlation Course

Faced with the closure of Walter Reed Army Hospital and the termination of a radiologic-pathology course that has served more than 90% of all radiology resident students, the American College of Radiology will provide this training after the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP) runs its final course in September.

CMS Delays Implementation of New Joint Commission Telemed Requirements

CMS has granted a reprieve to The Joint Commission (TJC), which would have required hospitals to implement cumbersome credentialing and privileging requirements for telemedicine services beginning July 15, 2010, when its ability to “privilege by proxy” expires. TJC now has until March 2011 to comply with CMS requirements, which are currently in

St Paul Radiology Bids NightHawk Adieu, Pays $26 Million

St Paul Radiology, Minneapolis, Minnesota, will exit a long-term agreement to provide teleradiology interpretations for NightHawk Radiology, Scottsdale, Arizona, at a price of $26 million, reports the Minneapolis StarTribune.

Proposed CMS Credentialing Rule Sideswipes Teleradiology Providers

A new rule proposed by The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to streamline the credentialing/privileging process for telemedicine could have a very different and disruptive effect if deemed applicable to teleradiology.