In a recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine, Harold C. Sox, MD, chair of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) committee to set national priorities for comparative-effectiveness research (CER), and colleagues¹ proposed a process through which the government could begin to fund research to improve medical decision making. The authors

In addition to extending coverage to an estimated 31 million US residents, the recently passed HR 3590, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, has ensured a future for comparative-effectiveness research (CER) by legislating funding, at $500 million per year, for the indefinite future. The stimulus bill launched the CER initiative with seed

After unprecedented growth over the past two decades, freestanding imaging providers have found the past few years challenging. Increased regulatory oversight, negative reimbursement changes, tighter access to financing, and general business uncertainty have all taken their toll, and pessimism within the industry runs rampant. In response, some

You know the tale. In the end, the steady pace of the tortoise won out over the supreme confidence and sheer speed of the hare; the hare simply did not value the focus, commitment, skill set, and tenacity exhibited by the tortoise. There are lots of lessons to be learned from this story, and over the years, most of us have learned how to apply at

In the late 1990s, Yale School of Medicine, New haven, Connecticut, implemented its first PACS. James Brink, MD, chair of the department of radiology and professor of diagnostic radiology, recalls how radiologists initially adapted to the brave new digital world: “It took some of the more senior radiologists a while to get used to using a cine

Lower mortality rates are among the benefits delivered by diagnostic imaging, according to a study in the December 2009 issue of the Journal of the American College of Radiology: JACR. The study—by David W. Lee, PhD, of GE Healthcare (Waukesha, Wisconsin), and David A. Foster, PhD, of Thomson Reuters (Ann Arbor, Michigan)—examines the association

Community hospitals, like their larger counterparts, continue to encounter financial challenges as they strive to deliver cutting-edge imaging services. For some institutions, engaging a full-service teleradiology provider could result in cost savings.

Harris County Hospital District (HCHD) is the public health-care system for the nation’s third most populous county (Harris County, Texas); with 44 locations, it generates 420,000 radiology procedures and 70,000 cardiology procedures each year. When HCHD made the decision to expand its electronic medical record (EMR) to include PACS and other