Medscape Survey: Is Medicine All About the Benjamins?

May 14, 2012 by Cat Vasko

It’s not often that my recreational reading intersects with my professional reading, but I was fascinated by the discussion in the comments of this Gawker post, which briefly remarks on the now-notorious Click here to read more and comment

Embattled and Inspired

April 06, 2012 by Cat Vasko

Your week has probably been a lot like mine, spent checking online news in between handling regular work for updates on how the Supreme Court looks to land on the question of health care reform’s individual mandate. The implications of this ruling from the nation’s highest court...

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When Will the Cloud Tip?

February 21, 2012 by Cat Vasko

Ever wish you could have been a fly on the wall when a buzzword came into being? I think that all the time about the “cloud.” How some marketing genius settled on that particular word to describe geographically remote warehouses of servers stacked upon servers is beyond me.

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There’s No Place Like Medical Homes

February 21, 2012 by Cat Vasko

The world changed on January 23, 2012, according to Paul Grundy, MD, MPH, president of the patient-centered primary care collaborative at the University of Utah. That was the date that WellPoint, which represents 39 payor markets nationwide, announced its care delivery redesign aimed at moving more and more health care to the...

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To Tweet or Not to Tweet?

February 20, 2012 by Cat Vasko

It’s my first time attending the pre-HIMSS CHIME forum for CIOs. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but Dr. Wendy Sue Swanson’s presentation on “Physicians and Patients in the Time of Twitter” definitely wasn’t it. Swanson is a pediatrician at Seattle Children’s Hospital ...

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New Year’s Resolutions for Radiology

January 06, 2012 by Cat Vasko

It’s a new year for radiology. As a recent analysis in JACR reminds us, since the DRA cuts to imaging took effect in 2007—has it really been five years?—the industry has seen a cascade of...

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Video of the RSNA flash mob

November 30, 2011 by Cat Vasko

Did you catch the RSNA flash mob the other day? We’ll be humming all afternoon. Check it out:

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Malpractice issues for radiology: more questions than answers

November 30, 2011 by Cat Vasko

Wonder of wonders, the sun is out here in Chicago! Tempting though it was to run outside and bask in the forty-degree heat wave, though, I couldn’t resist sitting in on Dr. Lenny Berlin’s session on malpractice issues for radiology this morning. I attend a session on...

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What should compensation plans incentivize?

November 29, 2011 by Cat Vasko

I started off this gloomy Chicago morning with a session on compensation plans for academic and private practices, led by Drs. Ron Arenson, Pablo Ros and Vincent Mathews. Hailing from both environments, the speakers examined the relative merits of compensation based on productivity and other factors, and shared information...

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Radiology Mobility: The Final Frontier?

November 28, 2011 by Cat Vasko

A conversation with an exhibitor today got me thinking about mobility and the cloud. The clear winner for most-toted gadget at RSNA, this year as well as last, is the iPad; I happen to be toting one myself. iPad apps are a feature of most IT vendors’ offerings now,...

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How Much Is Ten Percent Worth?

November 28, 2011 by Cat Vasko

The temperature outside is dropping, but inside McCormick Center the debates are heating up. I started off my morning with a session on critical issues facing the profession of radiology. I was hoping to hear some tough talk, and I wasn’t disappointed.

The first speaker, John...

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PHRs: Has the Revolution Arrived?

November 27, 2011 by Cat Vasko

Following Dr. Mendelson’s session on image sharing this morning, I couldn’t get one of his insights out of my mind: that the primary thrust of health care reform is toward reversing medicine’s inherently patriarchal culture, empowering patients to control their own health care information.