In a typical year, more than 10,000 bills and resolutions are introduced in Congress and fewer than 5% of these actually become law. So while radiology advocates celebrated another victory in August — a Senate bill to reverse cuts to Medicare payments for radiology — these long odds were definitely in the back of their minds.

An old saying has it that where you stand on a particular issue depends on where you sit. In other words, one’s point of view is heavily dependent on one’s frame of reference and milieu.

The number of radiology procedures ordered in the United States continues to increase at an unrelenting pace. Studies now suggest that at least one in ten residents currently receives a computed tomography (CT) scan each year and one in twenty undergoes a magnetic resonance scan (MRI). So where is the source of this seemingly endless demand for

The literature is full of case studies detailing how business lifecycles at varying points in the maturity of markets affect growth curves and levels of sustainable profitability. This is an exercise that goes well beyond analyzing the impact of the DRA on MR and CT profitability and plays to the essential composition of our free market system. The

As if the health care reimbursement picture for 2007 was not complex enough with the present and upcoming Deficit Reduction Act (DRA) changes for diagnostic imaging, on June 29 the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) published a proposed rule in the Federal Register that will, according to CMS, create the “largest revisions ever

There are impressive signs that outpatient imaging is beginning to coalesce in a real sense, moving from its initial stunned reaction to the DRA to a planned and coordinated sense of urgency that is reflective of a grown-up industry. Within the span of a recent one week period, the ACR and the NCQDIS both brought their activist constituents to

Those hoping for a repeal of cuts to diagnostic imaging contained in the Deficit Reduction Act (DRA) may have to drastically lower their expectations for 2006 was the word coming out of both the American College of Radiology (ACR) Annual Meeting and Chapter Leadership Conference and the National Coalition for Quality Diagnostic Imaging Services

Grassroots lobbying can at times seem more frustrating than helpful. Tremendous effort is invested in contacting legislators via e-mail, fax, phone, and in-person visits and often nothing seems to happen. But when it works, it can create successes that millions of dollars for professional lobbying could not match.