Industry watchers seemed intrigued but not especially surprised when Konica Minolta Medical Imaging announced its acquisition of 100 plus-employee Viztek in early October. The response was understandable, as the fusing was equal parts bold and sensible.

With a single-vendor CT fleet many years in service, Savannah, Ga.-based St. Joseph’s/Candler (SJ/C) health system was a model of customer loyalty.

Achieving unprecedented clinical and business efficiencies. Winning new business. Brandishing vanguard-level technology prowess while employing zero IT staff. Such are the returns mid-size radiology practices are realizing from their selection of the cloud-based, hardware-agnostic IRP/Plexus Imaging Workflow Management system.

Any distributed workflow solution worth its salt helps radiologists work at the top of their clinical skill set, maximize their productivity and fully integrate their workflow with that of the rest of their practice-and, ultimately, with the workflow of the ordering physician, practice or provider organization.

Taking a deep dive into the data generated by a practice can offer a roadmap, of sorts, to help find opportunities for value. A couple of recent top stories showcased two innovative ways to look at information that could help improve practice.

As the U.S. shifts further into the era of accountable care, hitting quality benchmarks becomes ever more important. Reimbursement is increasingly tied to the value generated by providers, and data about who is making the grade is becoming more transparent.

Here's a riddle: If every imaging interpretation is labeled stat, are any of them truly stat?

A hospital seeking to replace CT technology that does not meet the XR-29 standard has a wide range of slice counts and capabilities to consider, all the way up to state-of-the-art—but pricey—dual energy CT (DECT).