Customer Service

Training Technologists to Smile

In many imaging offices, the reception staff is coached and scripted, and its members might even engage in role-playing exercises in order to create the best experience for patients.

Radiology Business Journal, September 09, 2009

Developing Innovative Customer-service Initiatives

It could be the smiling greeter who welcomes patients into the facility, or the glasses of lemon water and the tray of cookies keeping them company in the waiting room.

ImagingBiz Newsletter, August 17, 2009

Place Your Bets

Do you think that for-profit freestanding outpatient imaging is a phenomenon destined to go the way of Tyrannosaurus rex?

ImagingBiz Newsletter, May 15, 2009

Back to the Future

In the publisher’s message for the inaugural issue of a new magazine.

Radiology Business Journal, May 01, 2009

Highly Functional Imaging

Great leadership will distinguish winning imaging organizations from those that struggle

Radiology Business Journal, March 01, 2009

Reform’s Caveat Emptor

In 2009, we find ourselves in more than just another new year.

ImagingBiz Newsletter, January 15, 2009

Bread Lines and Cab Lines

I’ll admit it. The constant drumbeat of depressing news in the business and popular press about the downturn in the world economy had me spooked as I traveled to the RSNA last week.

ImagingBiz Newsletter, December 15, 2008

The Ultimate Road Trip

Just in time, radiology providers are arriving at an understanding of their unique branding propositions.

Radiology Business Journal, December 01, 2008

On the Good Ship RBJ

What a year—what a breathless, heart-stopping, devastating, and hopeful year this has been for just about everyone I know, including all of us here at The Imaging Center Institute, publisher of Radiology Business Journal.

Radiology Business Journal, December 01, 2008

The Usual Suspects

As I read the cover story on radiology benefit managers (RBMs) in this month’s Diagnostic Imaging (DI) magazine.

ImagingBiz Newsletter, November 15, 2008

Imaging’s Déjá-vu Moment

My conversation with a prominent radiologist was startling, even as it piqued my journalistic interest.

ImagingBiz Newsletter, October 15, 2008

Magical Thinking Obscures the Goal: Improved Outcomes

High hopes have been pinned on the potential of IT to improve health care delivery here and around the world.

Radinformatics, September 15, 2008

Radiologist, Find Your Voice

In a major front-page story, “The High Cost of Precision,” in its Sunday, September 7, 2008 edition, the Los Angeles Times once again focused on the negative side of CT technology.

ImagingBiz Newsletter, September 15, 2008

Florida Hold’em

In the show down between Florida Hospital and Florida Radiology Associates, the winner took all

Radiology Business Journal, September 01, 2008

Physicians and the E Word

Physicians are understandably suspicious of efficiency efforts in medicine, but nowhere in the Hippocratic oath are they absolved from addressing the appropriate delivery of care

Radiology Business Journal, September 01, 2008

The Good, the Bad, and the Inspired

Finally, some good news for imaging.

ImagingBiz Newsletter, August 15, 2008

What’s With the Attitude?

At least half of the elements of various success formulas, in business and in life, relate to one’s ability to keep a positive outlook—especially when circumstances make it most difficult to do so.

ImagingBiz Newsletter, July 15, 2008

Growing Old Together

A lesson in business maturity: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer met the company’s cofounder Bill Gates when they were both undergraduates at Harvard.

ImagingBiz Newsletter, June 12, 2008

To Read or Not to Read

As Shakespeare’s famous Prince of Denmark did, many radiologists I know struggle with choosing between two mutually exclusive paths to fulfillment.

ImagingBiz Newsletter, May 15, 2008

The Politics of Greed

It has been said that all we need to focus on, in the daily battle for market share in the rough-and-tumble world of outpatient imaging, is a practice’s unique value proposition.

ImagingBiz Newsletter, April 15, 2008

20 Years in the Making

It was 20 years ago, almost to the day, that I created and launched the first issue of Imaging Economics, a publication that its editor, Cheryl Proval, and I subsequently built into a substantive magazine focused on the broad economic issues facing a then-transforming profession.

Radiology Business Journal, March 15, 2008

Heeding the Clarion Call

Like a POW on rice and water eating his first rib eye, an editor of a certain age finds no greater pleasure than getting her hands on 60-pound–paper stock after spending a year in the ether of electronic media.

Radiology Business Journal, March 15, 2008

The Loneliest Number

It has been said that the number one is the loneliest number, and it just may be that it is getting a whole lot lonelier.

ImagingBiz Newsletter, March 15, 2008

Bookmark This: Yottalook

Tired of sorting through attorney advertisements when you Google mesothelioma?

Radinformatics, February 15, 2008

Does Size Matter?

The recent business news about Microsoft making a run at Yahoo has me ruminating about the deal-making climate in outpatient imaging and how the current trend toward strategic partnerships, mergers, and acquisitions is changing the competitive landscape in many markets around the country.

ImagingBiz Newsletter, February 15, 2008

New Horizons

There is a theme one finds in the writings and musings of the best business leaders that remains consistent no matter what industry, profession, or type of organization.

ImagingBiz Newsletter, December 15, 2007

Chaos Theory Redux

This is the time of year when the Nobel prizes are handed out and that started me thinking about chaos theory and how the concept translates into our own profession’s mind-boggling array of alternative outcomes based on various approaches to the problems being presented, especially in today’s outpatient world.

ImagingBiz Newsletter, October 15, 2007

Goodbye to Adolescence

I’m sure you remember the time very well.

ImagingBiz Newsletter, September 15, 2007

The Changing Faces of Radiology

I have been musing about the past 24 years that I have been involved in the business side of radiology and how amazing the transformation of this profession has been during that time.

ImagingBiz Newsletter, June 12, 2007

Real Rads Don’t Eat Quiche

A dilemma facing today’s increasingly complex radiology practices is an interesting one, given the fact that the forces of business are converging in a kind of perfect storm on the practice environment, creating an increasing need for a fundamental understanding of the value of the commercial side of the medical group from each partner.

ImagingBiz Newsletter, June 12, 2007

Readers Respond: Denial, Disbelief, Anger

We have had many readers respond to last month’s editorial on the failure of our elected officials to grasp the malfeasance of the imaging cuts contained in the Deficit Reduction Act and to institute a moratorium.

ImagingBiz Newsletter, February 15, 2007

Desperately Seeking Leadership

I have visited some 40 radiology practices or imaging center organizations in the past six months, and a recurring theme in the questions that I am asked regarding business strategy relates to the somewhat elusive notion of leadership in this profession of ours.

ImagingBiz Newsletter, February 15, 2007

New Year’s Resolutions

With the new calendar year comes the annual opportunity to make our New Year’s resolutions.

ImagingBiz Newsletter, January 15, 2007

Denial, Disbelief, and Anger

One can no longer sugarcoat or deny the fact that radiology is a profession under siege.

ImagingBiz Newsletter, January 15, 2007

Noted Author Describes “A Whole New Radiology”

In the many strategic planning retreats that I have facilitated for radiology groups during the past couple of years.

ImagingBiz Newsletter, December 15, 2006

The Old New Competitive Weapon

It was sometime during the spring of 1985 when I had the chance to meet in Boston with the person who coined the term CIO. Bill Sinnott was at the time was one of the only Chief Information Officers in the country and from his vantage point at the Bank of Boston he had written an intriguing book on the subject.

ImagingBiz Newsletter, November 15, 2006

Imaging’s Unsung Heroes

I have the best job in the world.

ImagingBiz Newsletter, October 15, 2006

Imaging’s “Hail Mary” Moment

You know the scene.

ImagingBiz Newsletter, September 15, 2006

A Matter Of Perspective

An old saying has it that where you stand on a particular issue depends on where you sit. In other words, one’s point of view is heavily dependent on one’s frame of reference and milieu.

ImagingBiz Newsletter, August 15, 2006

The Incredible Shrinking Growth Market

The literature is full of case studies detailing how business lifecycles at varying points in the maturity of markets affect growth curves and levels of sustainable profitability.

ImagingBiz Newsletter, July 15, 2006

Whither Self Referral?

There is a wonderful scene in the book Sho-Gun in which a Portuguese pilot helps save the life of an English pilot when both are in a treacherous part of the world, far from the sea-based battleground where their respective countries battle for turf supremacy.

ImagingBiz Newsletter, April 15, 2006

Hand Wringing Is Not a Solution

I was impressed by the crowd.

ImagingBiz Newsletter, April 15, 2006

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