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.

In a comment letter on the final 2014 Medicare fee schedule for physicians, the ACR pointed out once more the cumulative effect on imaging reimbursement of various recent legislative and policy changes and urged CMS to adopt a “dampening” policy to limit the total amount a specific procedural code could be reduced in a given year.

With the addition of the 71 hospitals operated by Health Management Associates (HMA), Community Health Systems (CHS) becomes the largest hospital chain in the country, public or private, by number of facilities.

The Garden State becomes the 14th state that requires mammography providers to include breast density status in reports sent to patients.

Canada’s Calgary Scientific Inc. has become a member of the Health and Life Sciences Technology Alliance Partner (TAP) program of Hitachi Data Systems