Want to Survive Hard Times? Learn from Morgan and McCracken

February 08, 2012 by Steve Smith

There is a tendency by those working in any profession, whether it is accounting, the law, or healthcare, to gather information from familiar sources. In medical imaging, we read the books, visit the websites and attend the conferences that are steeped in medical jargon and are created by people whose backgrounds qualify them to offer that particular information.

There’s nothing wrong with that, for ongoing education and continuous improvement should be part of our daily routine.

The challenge arises when we fail to recognize the sources outside of medical imaging that may have as...

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HIMSS: The People You Meet on Line at Meetings

March 01, 2011 by Cheryl Proval

Getting out of the office these days is not easy. First, there is the thought of all of the work that will be waiting when you get back. Then there is all of the work waiting when you get back. Finally, there are all of the unread emails in your Inbox. Recently, while in Orlando attending the HIMSS annual meeting, I was reminded why it is important to get out of the office, go into the field, and drink deeply...

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8 Key Drivers of Employee Engagement

August 25, 2010 by Cheryl Proval

Managers, be advised: Work to increase satisfaction rather than engagement among employees at your peril. Why? You could end up retaining a disengaged employee who is quite satisfied with their position and happy to stick around to poison your culture by influencing the 52% of your workforce that is neither engaged nor disengaged. That was the advice of William R. Johnson, MBA, CRA, director of diagnostic services, Summa Wadsworth-Rittman Hospital, Wadsworth, Ohio, who spoke on Interviewing, Recruitment, and Retention during...

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What You Can Learn from the Rise and Fall of Cosmetic CT

December 01, 2009 by Cat Vasko

Jonathan Berlin offered an interesting case study during this evening’s “Dos and Don’ts” session on strategic planning and marketing. “This will get us thinking about some of the things people have done wrong in the past,” he said. The case he discussed dates back to 2001, when two businesspeople decided to lease an EBCT scanner to perform whole body scans, cardiac and lung scans and virtual colonoscopy. He called the fledgling cosmetic imaging company “Life CT.”

Life CT was in business for three years, primarily offering full body CT. To capitalize on different markets, the company...

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Zero Defects: Is It Possible?

December 01, 2009 by Cat Vasko

Lucy Glenn, MD, spoke this morning on strategies for minimizing errors in diagnostic imaging. She began by discussing the concept of “zero defects”: “We as health care workers have to change our mindset,” she said. “What the typical organization wants is very few defects. We have to embrace what the patient wants, which is no defects. We have to get to a mindset where we think that perfection is possible and injuries are avoidable.”

According to Glenn, even 99.9% reliability is unacceptable: “At 99.9% we’d have two major airline crashes a week,” she pointed out. “That’s why...

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Anatomy of an Error

December 01, 2009 by Cat Vasko

This morning’s sessions on quality improvement continued with Jonathan Kruskal, MD, PhD, focusing on safety and risk management in radiology. His presentation, “Anatomy and Pathophysiology of Radiological Errors,” kicked off with a quote from AJR: “It is not the occurrence of error that is damning, but the failure to seize on it as an opportunity for improvement.”

So: what constitutes an error? According to Kruskal, it’s any deviation from the expected norm, irrespective of the outcome. “In other words, if you miss a small sclerotic lesion but it’s of no consequence to the patient,...

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Scientific Methodology for Performance Assessment

December 01, 2009 by Cat Vasko

Quality improvement. It’s the phrase on everyone’s lips at this year’s RSNA, and several sessions this morning will focus on the nuts and bolts of the process, providing a roadmap for making concrete steps toward practice improvement. Dr. James Duncan spoke on using the scientific method to assess physician performance. “The public is spending an incredible amount of money on health care,” he said, “and their impression is that they’re not getting their money’s worth.”

Duncan touched on the Shewhart/Deming cycle, Six Sigma, Lean, Lean Six Sigma and other methods of...

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Pat Kroken on Improving Hospital Relationships

November 30, 2009 by Cat Vasko

Pat Kroken began her session this morning by referring to herself as “the ultimate capitalist.” She mentioned a few operational issues that can be overlooked by radiology groups working with hospitals, including the issue of remote reads touched on by Dr. Borgstede. “Remote reads introduce a whole new business dynamic to the hospital-radiologist relationship,” she said.

Hospitals, she said, determine quality in radiology based on several factors, some of which might seem petty or insignificant to radiologists:

  —Reports dictated quickly and results are called for significant findings   —Radiologists sign reports promptly and don’...

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Jim Borgstede, MD, on Staffing and Imaging Workload

November 30, 2009 by Cat Vasko

Jim Borgstede, MD, kicked off this morning’s second session on the topic of “Where is the Radiologist?: Radiology’s Changing Dynamics.” The well attended panel focused on staffing and imaging workloads; Borgstede reported that workloads for radiologists have increased sharply since the early nineties, while payment has begun to level off. Well, no huge shocks there.

According to Borgstede, issues affecting workload today include the number of radiologists, radiologists’ credibility with patients, hospital system relationships and more. “My assumptions are that medical imaging will continue to grow,” he said. “Hence the reason everyone is interested in...

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Paramjit Chopra, MD: What You’re Doing Wrong

November 30, 2009 by Cat Vasko

“When I look at this country,” said Paramjit Chopra, MD, who immigrated to the US twenty years ago, “I realize that we are incredibly spoiled. We want everybody to have everything, and we don’t want to worry about who’s going to pay for it. The basic principle of economics is that there is going to be scarcity.” Just the facts at this morning’s session on what radiologists need to do to prepare for health care reform, where Chopra led the discussion.

“You’re going to get your butt kicked,” he said. “You’ve got...

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