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.

Place Your Bets

Do you think that for-profit freestanding outpatient imaging is a phenomenon destined to go the way of Tyrannosaurus rex? Some people do. Some are betting that the resurgence of hospital and health system interest in the outpatient revenue stream will eventually dwarf the freestanding market, rendering it obsolete. I’m wondering whether this is a

ARRA Update: Opportunities and Risks for Health IT

Sponsored by FUJIFILM Healthcare Americas

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), signed into law on February 17, includes $19 billion in funding for health care IT initiatives through the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH). How these funds will be distributed, however, remains unclear, and radiology practices and hospital

F&S Chair Frank Seidelmann, D.O.: On the Radiologist of the Future

Radisphere

Frank Seidelmann, D.O., is cofounder and chair of Franklin and Seidelmann Subspecialty Radiology, Beachwood, Ohio. After bearing witness to countless imaging booms and busts over the course of 30-plus years in the field, Seidelmann looks to subspecialization as the trend that will change the face of radiology as we know it in the years to come.

Recovery Audit Contractors: Coming Soon to a Provider Near You

Medicare providers and suppliers nationwide have been preparing for increased Medicare audit activity in anticipation of the nationwide rollout of the permanent Recovery Audit Contractor (RAC) Program. CMS suspended implementation of the permanent RAC program in late 2008, but the stay was lifted in February 2009. The RAC project is back on track,

Hosted RIS: An Efficient Alternative

Sponsored by FUJIFILM Healthcare Americas

When Vanderbilt Imaging Services LLC, the freestanding outpatient radiology practice associated with Vanderbilt Medical Center, Nashville, Tenn, opened its doors in 1999, the center decided to implement an alternative to the traditional RIS configuration: a hosted RIS. The benefits of a vendor-hosted RIS solution include increased reliability,

Thin-client Enterprise Visualization: A Top-down View

Say that Amazon.com operated using a thick-client model (it doesn’t, but pretend it does for argument's sake). Imagine, then, the nightmare that the head of the company’s operations would face if tasked with making sure that every customer could visit, navigate, and shop on the site successfully following even a minor revision or upgrade.

MGH Decision-support Study: A Shot Across the RBM Bow

Sponsored by Hitachi Healthcare Americas

A new study1 finding that radiology order-entry (ROE) and decision-support (DS) tools act to curtail utilization rates for advanced imaging is being celebrated as proof that a White House proposal to deploy radiology benefit managers (RBMs) as Medicare gatekeepers is unnecessary and ill conceived.

The Future of Hospital-based Outpatient Imaging

Is outpatient imaging on the hospital campus still strategically relevant for hospitals and health systems? If so, what will it take to capture this volume in an increasingly competitive market? These are the two primary questions facing hospitals and health systems as they contemplate their campus-based outpatient imaging strategies.