“The more you see, the better you are,” Javier Beltran, MD, FACR, says. “You’re exposed to so much pathology that you’ve seen it all, at the end of the day. It brings your expertise to another level.” Beltran is talking about what might be called extreme subspecialization. Beltran is a musculoskeletal radiologist. He estimates that he personally

Hospitals do not cede turf easily to competitors, even within the collegial environment of a multisite system. That, however, is precisely what had to happen before St. Luke’s Hospital and Health Network, Bethlehem, Pa, could centralize breast care among its four hospitals and six outpatient imaging sites in a regional diagnostic breast-imaging

In the 1980s and 1990s, payor fees were generous for the newest modalities, and most freestanding imaging facilities were quite profitable. There was little need for advanced cost accounting. Imaging centers and facilities within physician’s offices proliferated, however. Payors became far more aggressive in discounting what they would pay. When

What’s expected of leaders in radiology has changed, Frank J. Lexa, MD, MBA, informed his audience at the 23rd Annual Economics of Diagnostic Imaging 2008: National Symposium on October 24, 2008, in Arlington, Va. Lexa is clinical professor of radiology at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center, Philadelphia, and adjunct professor of

Do you think that for-profit freestanding outpatient imaging is a phenomenon destined to go the way of Tyrannosaurus rex? Some people do. Some are betting that the resurgence of hospital and health system interest in the outpatient revenue stream will eventually dwarf the freestanding market, rendering it obsolete. I’m wondering whether this is a

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), signed into law on February 17, includes $19 billion in funding for health care IT initiatives through the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH). How these funds will be distributed, however, remains unclear, and radiology practices and hospital

Frank Seidelmann, D.O., is cofounder and chair of Franklin and Seidelmann Subspecialty Radiology, Beachwood, Ohio. After bearing witness to countless imaging booms and busts over the course of 30-plus years in the field, Seidelmann looks to subspecialization as the trend that will change the face of radiology as we know it in the years to come.

Medicare providers and suppliers nationwide have been preparing for increased Medicare audit activity in anticipation of the nationwide rollout of the permanent Recovery Audit Contractor (RAC) Program. CMS suspended implementation of the permanent RAC program in late 2008, but the stay was lifted in February 2009. The RAC project is back on track,