Radiology’s Next Move: Bigger Data

In the 1990s, it was easy to be a success. You had to work hard not to be a success. That’s not true any more,” according to Michael P. Recht, MD, Louis Marx professor of radiology at New York University School of Medicine and chair of the radiology...

Financing Growth in a Changing Imaging Environment

Practices, imaging centers, and hospital radiology departments continue to keep an eye on expanding their service lines and market reach. In part, this expansion is an effort to counteract the negative effects of declining reimbursements while meeting demands to provide better care. Mergers and acquisitions, as well as the...

Revenue-cycle Management: Minimizing Denials and Maximizing Collections

The best way to minimize denials is to prevent them in the first place, by making sure that medical claims meet the requirements for clean claims. A clean claim is defined as a claim that meets the standards required by insurance carriers for payment on first submission.

Health Care’s New Financial Outlook

A window of access to capital has opened for hospitals, according to Lisa Goldstein, because of the improvement in the debt markets seen over the past six to nine months. On June 23, 2010, at the Rescuing Retirement

If you are like many physicians, you are lamenting the losses to your retirement plan after the financial meltdown. You might have lost a substantial amount, and you might wonder how you can quickly regain the losses.

If you have a 401(k) account, you can contribute up...

Imaging-center Valuation 2010: Post-reform Drivers

While the industry landscape has certainly changed significantly since Radiology Business Journal published my article on this subject three years ago, the primary factors that drive the desire to complete transactions and the valuations remain largely intact. <...

Radiology Billing, CSI: Managing Individual Payor Contracts

At NYU Langone Medical Center (NYULMC), New York, New York, even though the radiology department’s billing office adheres to the principle of a cross-trained staff pool, it practices the explicit division of labor: Coders do nothing but code, payment posters post payments, claims processors specialize in making sure...

Managing the Revenue Cycle

Viewing revenue-cycle management as a function limited only to billing is shortsighted at best, and is more likely to be a mistake. Revenue-cycle management affects the entire practice, imaging center, and hospital radiology department, from a new patient’s first inquiry (whether made by telephone, through an online portal,...

Restructuring the Balance Sheet

If you are anything like me, you have had a few sleepless nights worrying about the future of the health-services industry. Historically, the industry...

Accessing Capital in a Tight Credit Market

After weathering last fall’s fiscal catastrophe, many hospital CFOs now find themselves in Bert Zimmerli’s position. Though Zimmerli is senior...

Imaging JVs: Strategic Partners or Just One More Competitor?

Hospital-radiology group JVs are key to preserving and growing imaging market share, but failure to cement strong relationships and expectations from the start is...

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Perspectives on Quality

IMAGINGBIZ FAMILY OF PUBLICATIONS

Perspectives

Harley J Hammerman, MD
A Radiologist Swings Back on Escalating Health Care Costs

Cheryl Proval
The Jig is Up

Steve Smith
Mickey Mouse Medicine? You Should Be So Lucky

Curtis Kauffman-Pickelle
Video: Influence and Leadership

Cat Vasko
When Bigger Isn’t Better

Lena Kauffman
Get Your CT Lung Cancer Screening at the Mall

The High Price of Low Payment

Prepare for sharp increases in diagnostic imaging costs if CMS prices practices and entrepreneurs out of the imaging center business

The setting was luxurious, but the mood decidedly frugal at the recent Imaging 100 meeting in Carlsbad, Calif. Not that executives from the nation’s leading outpatient imaging...

The Weakening Economy and Health Care Collections

One of the overlooked consequences of the current economic uncertainty is the effect on health care collections, but as imaging centers struggle to adapt to the triple witching hour—declining reimbursement, the sour economy, and the increase in consumer-driven health care—effective, efficient collections have become crucial to survival.<...

Top 10 Control Items for Managing Practice Financials

You have, no doubt, heard the story about the quiet, loyal employee with many years of service to the business who one day sends his boss a postcard from Rio de Janiero, saying that he’s not coming back. Then the owner discovers that a large amount from accounts...

Historical Review of Mergers and Acquisitions in Diagnostic Imaging

From the go-go years to the present, acquisition strategies in the outpatient diagnostic imaging field have not always worked

As we sit on the precipice of a meltdown in the credit markets, I am reminded of a quote from Winston Churchill: “Those who forget history are bound...

Negotiating for Better Reimbursement

Negotiating higher reimbursement is nearly always possible, according to Penny Noyes, president and CEO, Health Business Navigators, Bowling Green, Ky. She presented Payor Contracts: Strategies to Analyze and Negotiate Improved Payor Reimbursement on October 21, 2008, in San Diego, at the annual conference of the Medical Group Management Association.

The New Economics of Contrast

Contrast is the number-one consumable in the radiology department, and its use is being driven by efficiency, safety, and reimbursement concerns

Not too long ago, prices for contrast media could get a radiology director’s pulse racing. Now, that pulse is fairly steady, even though the flow...

Financial Adventures in Imaging, Post DRA

It’s been a year and a half since the debut of the DRA imaging cuts, and the dust is beginning to settle in the outpatient imaging market, according to Douglas Lynch, senior vice president and US chief risk officer, and Thomas Bruce, senior vice president and senior credit...

Operating Radiology As an Individual Business Unit

Both hospitals and imaging centers are struggling with economic and political pressures that are straining their relationships with staff; finance (administration/owners); radiologists; vendors (IT providers, equipment manufacturers, suppliers, and consultants); referring physicians; and the community (your patients). Collectively, we will call them your partners.

The struggle...

Stronger Financial Statements Earn Better Financing Options

Obtaining the most favorable financing depends on having the kinds of financial statements that lenders want to see. Before seeking funding for a de novo build, an upgrade to an existing imaging center, or new modality purchases, it is important to understand the commonly used types of financial statements,...

Structuring Imaging Ventures in Today’s Regulatory Climate

Over the past 15 years, outpatient imaging has been subject to high growth rates. Because this has been particularly true of the more profitable high-end imaging services, this growth has attracted attention from all quarters. For the first 10 of those 15 high-growth years, outpatient imaging was most often provided by hospitals...

Get Your CT Lung Cancer Screening at the Mall

One of the developments advocates for responsible screening of patients for lung cancer with low-dose CT specifically have warned about is screening occurring outside experienced facilities where patients can receive counseling about risks and benefits, as well as help reading their results. However, there is little they may be able to do to stop such practices

From Quality to Outcomes: Deploying Clinical Analytics

Radiology’s ACO Play: Get in the Game—Now

Radiology’s Next Move: Bigger Data

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