Health care lobbyists tell Washington, D.C., news source The Hill that they are close to winning a repeal of the 2.3% medical device excise tax included in the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and the mounting pressure on both parties to compromise on a government funding and debt ceiling deal may be working in their favor

In order to improve Lexmark’s Perceptive healthcare content management and workflow solutions and vendor neutral archive (VNA), Lexmark International has acquired leading PACS connectivity platform PACSGEAR for a cash purchase price of approximately $54 million

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.

It is hard to measure the indirect impact on medical imaging from the overall negative economic consequences of a government shutdown. However, the direct impact on practical day-to-day business operations should be fairly small judging by the contingency plans of various government agencies

Last year, the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) referred to the 2.3% medical device excise tax as a “job killing” burden that would also “stifle innovation.” More than a year after the NCPA Issue Brief, the tax lives on

Even in the wake of health care reform, radiology practices continue to struggle with managing payment from uninsured patients. The problem plagues hospital-based groups, in particular, according to Krista Pelensky, director of operations with Zotec-MMP. “Many hospital-based groups have seen an uptick in uninsured business and an increase in emergency-department services,” she says.

Few business processes for radiology practices are as fraught as negotiating managed-care contracts. Their duration and durability put a significant level of both current and future income on the line, but small and medium-sized practices, in particular, might feel that they have little leverage in the negotiating process. The keys to gaining the

Imaging Healthcare Specialists (“IHS”), a 30-radiologist practice based in San Diego, California, has a simple ethos driving its business decisions. “We view ourselves, first and foremost, as a medical practice,” Thomas Cleary, president and COO of Imaging Healthcare Specialists, explains. “Every day, every employee who works for us—from the person who schedules the patient, to the technologist who provides the exam, and from the radiologist delivering the report to the IT person—is making an impact on patients’ lives.”