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.

There is a wonderful scene in the book Sho-Gun in which a Portuguese pilot helps save the life of an English pilot when both are in a treacherous part of the world, far from the sea-based battleground where their respective countries battle for turf supremacy. Since the two find themselves facing a common foe in the Japanese, the Portuguese “Anjin”

I was impressed by the crowd. Not just the fact that there were over 100 imaging center executives, radiologists and administrators gathered, but with the fact that they all came to the RCG Healthcare symposium in Las Vegas at the end of March to get serious about their future. There was not a hand wringer in the group and those that I talked to