With all the daily obstacles facing physicians these days, getting paid for the services they provide to keep patients healthy should be easy. Unfortunately, it isn't always.

The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) is proposing an alternative payment model under the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015, and it includes a bundled option that would set a target spending level for imaging services.

A battle over big bucks is looming as major private health insurers in some states seek to aggressively hike premiums for plans they sold through Affordable Care Act exchanges. The companies angling for the biggest increases cite ballooning costs incurred by new enrollees. Consumer groups are preparing to push state insurance regulators to force the carriers to scale back their requests.

Healthcare providers that successfully transition to the “New Health Economy” will collect more of their patients’ bills. They will complete the collections more quickly, too, enabling them to better manage cash flow and strip administrative costs to the bone.

Is flat-rate pricing the wave of the future for outpatient radiology? One large practice in the Midwest is going to find out.

America’s hospitals are open for business around the clock, ready to treat victims of major accidents, disasters, epidemics and attacks. But this readiness—hospitals’ “standby role”—is not explicitly funded. 

Two independent radiology practices in New York’s Hudson Valley have finalized a plan, three years in the works, to form a joint venture and begin actively inviting other groups to climb aboard. 

The largest daily newspaper in Nevada has done radiology a kindness. On a Sunday in late March, the Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday circ: 200,000-plus), ran a feature article titled “Radiologists play a key role in modern medicine.”