What do you do with legacy data-storage applications containing near-antique patient information—so old it hasn’t been accessed in up to 20 years—that may yet be needed for legal, financial, clinical or population-management purposes?

It’s T-minus two and a half years, give or take, on the liftoff of Meaningful Use stage 3. In 2018, every eligible hospital and eligible professional must attest to a single set of eight objectives—or suffer reduced Medicare/Medicaid reimbursements—in what is expected to be the final and definitive MU stage.

The American Medical Association is warning medical practices to beware private payors bearing virtual credit cards. The “convenient” payment method is increasingly being used to conceal hefty—and avoidable—fees.

McKesson’s business performance services division has won the business of Elmhurst Radiologists, a 12-doc practice operating within 259-bed Elmhurst Memorial Hospital, part of the three-hospital Edward-Elmhurst system outside Chicago.

Two mandates are driving U.S. healthcare policy: improving quality and reducing costs. At vRad, leadership has embraced these concepts and integrated them into its corporate mission.

More than three-quarters of private radiology groups, some 76%, are actively marketing themselves on Facebook, Twitter and the like. Less than a third of academic radiology departments (28%) are following suit—but that’s likely to change, and soon.

A supermajority of primary care physicians credit advanced imaging with helping them make better decisions for their patients—and the longer the docs have been practicing medicine, the more appreciative they are of the latest and greatest in imaging technology. 

As consolidation in the hospital market continues apace—driven by the increasing prevalence of integrated delivery networks (IDNs), accountable-care organizations, and other new payment/delivery models—many radiology groups find themselves at a crossroads. How can they gain the scale necessary to meet the mounting demands of today’s care continuum, given the continued downward pressure on reimbursement? RadAnalytics spoke with Bill Pickart, CEO of Integrated Medical Partners, about an emerging option that strikes a compromise between independence and scale, enabling groups to take a proactive approach to meeting hospitals’ evolving quality and service directives and needs.