Best Practices: How the RBMs Score

February 19, 2012 | Feature

Growth in imaging utilization has led prior authorization (a 1980s health-plan strategy) to be applied to advanced imaging services. RBMs have developed increasingly complex programs to reduce imaging expenses through utilization management, credentialing, channeling to lower-cost providers, and network contracting.

Five competitors dominate this marketplace: American Imaging... Read More »

University of Pennsylvania Health System: Inside an Imaging-informatics Incubator

February 19, 2012 | Feature

By observing the quantity and quality of informatics innovation emerging from a radiology department, it is possible to identify those institutions that are nurturing the next wave of informaticists in radiology. One beacon is the University of Pennsylvania Health System (UPHS) in Philadelphia, where R. Nick Bryan, MD, PhD,... Read More »

Dashboards: From Data to Discovery

February 19, 2012 | Feature

Paul J. Chang, MD, FSIIM, says, “Because of the external expectations that we will all do more in radiology with less time and fewer resources, we are now entering a maturation phase that I call image management. The emphasis, now, is on understanding what we do to help the... Read More »

Price Disparity + Price Transparency=Imaging-market Turmoil

February 19, 2012 | Feature

Buy a banana, and it will cost you less than a dollar per pound—unless you’re in a hotel, where it might cost you twice the grocery-store price. The prices of many items readily obtainable by the consumer usually fall within a well-defined range, according to supply and... Read More »

CT and MRI:  Regional Variations in Utilization and Reimbursement

February 19, 2012 | NONE

Provided by Regents Health Resources

Regents Health Resources was formed in 1996 to assist hospitals and physicians in the development... Read More »

Following the Sound and the Fury: Meaningful-use Attestation

February 19, 2012 | Priors

After government officials revised the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act to include hospital-based physicians practicing in outpatient settings, radiology practices began scrambling to determine what it will mean to them. IT adjustments take time and money, and practices waiting for stage 2 meaningful-use requirements are... Read More »

Is It Worth It? Radiology and Comparative-effectiveness Research

February 19, 2012 | Priors

Imaging is increasingly pervasive in modern medicine; according to a 2011 study¹ published in Radiology, the use of CT scans in emergency-department visits has risen 16% per year since 1995, and the report estimated that the modality could have been used in 20% of emergency-department visits in 2011. Remarkably little research has been... Read More »

A Conversation With the Nation’s Health IT Chiefs

February 19, 2012 | Priors

Attestation for stage 1 meaningful use is underway in radiology, and expectations are rising about the ability of IT to reduce cost and increase quality in health care. In separate interviews with Radiology Business Journal, Farzad Mostashari, MD, ScM, national coordinator for health IT, and Todd Park, CTO for the... Read More »

Commodity Practice or Experience Monopoly?

February 19, 2012 | The Bottom Line

Imagine that your practice has been barreling down the health-care highway for years. Now, though, there’s a T intersection straight ahead, with one route leading to completely commoditized health care and the other (the road far less traveled) leading to high-touch, high-quality care—to an experience monopoly. This... Read More »

Rehabilitating the E Word

February 19, 2012 | Adview

The upside to Berwick being shown the door in Washington is the pleasure to be had in reading his first major talk¹ since leaving the office of CMS administrator on December 2, 2011. The occasion was the 23rd Annual National Forum on Quality Improvement in Health Care of the Institute... Read More »

New Payment Models: Where Culture and Business Intelligence Meet

February 17, 2012 | NONE

The specifics of how the traditional radiology practice model will fit with the emerging paradigm of the accountable-care organization (ACO) remain unclear, but it is clear that radiologists should be thinking about how to bend the cost and quality curves, according to Ted Kerner, MD, CEO of Triad Radiology... Read More »

New World, New Infrastructure: Informatics Requirements of Emerging Payment Models

February 17, 2012 | NONE

Much has been said and written in anticipation of new payment models like the accountable-care organization (ACO), but one consideration that often falls by the wayside, in all the talk of risk and reward, is informatics, Tom Smith says. Smith is CIO of Triad Radiology Associates (Winston-Salem, North Carolina). â€... Read More »

ACOs and the Radiology Practice: Adding and Quantifying Value

February 17, 2012 | NONE

The stated aims of accountable-care organizations (ACOs) mirror the triple aim proposed by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (Cambridge, Massachusetts), and both sets of goals have one common thrust: placing the patient at the center of the health-care continuum. As Linda Skarzynski, CFO for Triad Radiology Associates (Winston-Salem, North... Read More »

Analytics Key to Catalyzing Change

February 17, 2012 | NONE

The central goal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) is, as its name suggests, to restore patients to their rightful place as the center around which US health care revolves. Though the legislation is complex, the goal is simple: to incentivize an overburdened, decentralized system toward... Read More »

Imaging in the Global Marketplace: A Conversation With Stephen Pomeranz, MD

February 11, 2012 | Imaging Futures

As radiology practices continue to grow in size via mergers, partnerships, and other forms of consolidation, the model of the nationwide practice is beginning to appeal to many. ProScan Imaging (Cincinnati, Ohio) owns 24 freestanding imaging centers in the United States, and it offers teleradiology services both nationally and internationally.... Read More »

Outsourced Billing: An Administrator’s View

February 11, 2012 | Revenue Track

The decision to outsource a radiology practice’s billing can be emotionally fraught. Many practices have historically employed sizable in-house billing departments, and though the decision to outsource might appear simple from an economic perspective, when it comes to putting people out of work, administrators understandably blanch. Further, while... Read More »

The Business Case for Pediatric Imaging: Kids’ MRI at Lourdes Hospital

February 11, 2012 | RadBrand Builder

Lourdes Hospital in Binghamton, New York, knew that it was losing pediatric MRI patients to a local imaging center with a 0.6T open MRI system, but it wasn’t until the imaging department started collecting data and tracking how many phone calls a day it received inquiring about open... Read More »

Mergers and Acquisitions: Putting a Price on Reputation

February 11, 2012 | Deal Scan

The concept of personal goodwill in the mergers and acquisitions of imaging centers occupies a decidedly intangible realm. John P. Holman, JD, an attorney in the Falls Church, Virginia, office of law firm Reed Smith LLP, has seen negotiations play out largely over the goodwill issue, with patience and... Read More »

Service and Support Are Critical to PACS Success

February 11, 2012 | Productivity

Like many radiology practices in the United States, Premier Radiology (Nashville, Tennessee) has seen its share of changes over the past few years. James C. King, MD, radiologist and owner, says, “It’s been a tumultuous time. Six years ago, we had one outpatient center; now, we have nine.... Read More »

Can You Compete With South Korea?

February 11, 2012 | The Big Picture

There is no question that the competitive environment for medical-imaging services has become much more intense in recent years. As prices erode and certain commoditization sets in, branding, messaging, and the ability to differentiate a value proposition are becoming critically important to the success of hospitals, imaging centers, and... Read More »

Riverside Radiology: Growing the Practice with Imaging Informatics

February 10, 2012 | NONE

When Riverside Radiology and Interventional Associates (Columbus, Ohio), one of the largest radiology practices in the United States, went to PACS vendor FUJIFILM Medical Systems USA (Stamford, Connecticut) to make some custom changes to its Synapse platform, Fuji representatives were all ears.

Jim Morgan, vice president of... Read More »

ARA’s Box Workflow Redefines the Practice-productivity Platform

February 10, 2012 | NONE

When one of two largest hospital groups in the Austin, Texas, area decided to implement PACS, CIO R. Todd Thomas of the Austin Radiological Association (ARA) had some choices to make for his night coverage. Although ARA had mostly blanketed the area with Synapse PACS (FUJIFILM Medical Systems USA,... Read More »

Medford Group Ups Productivity Ante with PAS/RIS/VR Integration

February 10, 2012 | NONE

As the largest radiology practice in a 150-mile radius, Medford Radiological Group (MRG), PC, in Oregon enjoys significant demand for its imaging services from referrers near and far. Michael Troychak, MD, MRG’s president, says that satisfying such demand and (most important) providing the caliber of patient care that... Read More »

Commoditization of Imaging: Fighting the Trend

January 14, 2012 | Imaging Futures

As a macroeconomic phenomenon, commoditization is fairly characteristic of a maturing marketplace—two words that describe radiology in the United States perfectly. As the industry has matured, through increased competition and more deleterious economic pressures, radiology practices have increasingly found themselves competing on price alone, raising the risk that... Read More »

Valuation of Imaging Centers: 2012 Outlook

January 14, 2012 | Deal Scan

If one were to chart trends in physician employment over the past 15 years, the result would closely resemble the recent wild swings seen in the stock market: significant peaks followed abruptly by equally sharp declines, according to Kevin McDonough, CFA, a senior manager for VMG Health (Dallas, Texas).