INDIANAPOLIS, IN (February 25, 2014) – Zotec Partners (Zotec), the industry leader in hospital-based physician billing and practice management services, has resumed its “Zotec Partners University” program this week in its new state-of-the-art training facility. 

In November 2013, Virtual Radiologic (vRad) released its initial set of radiology patient-care (RPCSM) indices, the first findings-based benchmarking measures for imaging activity and utilization based on the global practice’s clinical data repository. Jordan Halter, vice president of solutions for the company, says, “With 23 million studies and growing, vRad’s database reflects practicing radiology on a large scale. That means that we have insight that reflects the national radiology market. vRad wants to use these indices as a way to start a dialogue in radiology. Everyone must start measuring value, quality, and performance as we transition from a fee-for-volume to a fee-for-value model. Until now, nobody quite knew how.” 

In an effort to help other physicians diagnose and treat complex neurological cancers and disorders, radiology researchers at Johns Hopkins have taken collective diagnostic registries to the next level with the development of a library of children’s brain images. The image databank, being used today by doctors at Johns Hopkins, currently houses 7,000 brain images of Hopkins patients, and should be publicly available in three years, according to Thierry Huisman, MD, a professor of radiology, neurology, and pediatrics and the director of pediatric radiology and neuroradiology at the Hopkins Children's Center, via an announcement from Johns Hopkins.

Despite hopes for high enrollment through the health-insurance exchanges (HIEs) of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), the numbers are well below forecast levels as the March 31 enrollment deadline approaches.

Healthcare providers are rolling up their sleeves even further and getting down to the business of healthcare. With the final CMS reimbursement decisions made last month and open enrollment in the health insurance exchanges (HIEs) and Medicaid closing next month, there are new data impacting radiology practices. For sure, lower contracted rates from payors and lower reimbursement are on the way—for an extremely large patient population. Radiology departments and practices need to revisit the efficiency of their operations.

As anyone who has been around medical imaging for any amount of time can tell you, the latest headwind is the same as it’s seemingly always been: reimbursement cuts.

As my partner Doug Smith is fond of saying, the awakening period for hospitals is upon us.

There is little question that consolidation and integration in the health-care sector is in full force and will continue to dominate the landscape in 2014—given the markedly high level of healthcare entities merger and acquisition activity in 2013, of that we can be certain.