As a neuroradiologist, Ray Kirk, MD, president of Greater Houston Radiology Associates (GHRA) in Texas, often considers both the financial and clinical futures of the specialty. “Where radiology is today,” he says, “there is a need to make ourselves more relevant to the patient-care process in the eyes of our customers—hospitals, referring

With radiology practices increasingly facing the imperative to function as businesses, dashboarding has become a favorite buzzword—but what does it really mean? It is our contention, at Integrated Medical Partners, that dashboarding is a widely misunderstood concept. A practice’s business intelligence is about much more than the visually pleasing

Radiology-practice alignment with hospitals and health systems has never been a simple proposition, and recent years have seen the severance of long-standing ties between hospitals and the practices that served them. Simultaneously, however, conditions in the US health-care market have made alignment between the two parties a more promising

Multiple factors have coalesced recently to create the ideal environment for improved radiology group–hospital alignment, including regulatory upheavals, economic pressure, and changes in reimbursement. The alignment pressures have resulted in much discussion concerning group consolidation. Frequently, this consolidation takes one of three forms:

The specifics of how the traditional radiology practice model will fit with the emerging paradigm of the accountable-care organization (ACO) remain unclear, but it is clear that radiologists should be thinking about how to bend the cost and quality curves, according to Ted Kerner, MD, CEO of Triad Radiology Associates (Winston-Salem, North Carolina

Much has been said and written in anticipation of new payment models like the accountable-care organization (ACO), but one consideration that often falls by the wayside, in all the talk of risk and reward, is informatics, Tom Smith says. Smith is CIO of Triad Radiology Associates (Winston-Salem, North Carolina). “With ACOs still in the early stages

The stated aims of accountable-care organizations (ACOs) mirror the triple aim proposed by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (Cambridge, Massachusetts), and both sets of goals have one common thrust: placing the patient at the center of the health-care continuum. As Linda Skarzynski, CFO for Triad Radiology Associates (Winston-Salem, North

The central goal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) is, as its name suggests, to restore patients to their rightful place as the center around which US health care revolves. Though the legislation is complex, the goal is simple: to incentivize an overburdened, decentralized system toward reducing costs while improving