Ready, Set—Attest

November 28, 2011 | NONE

When Keith Dreyer, DO, PhD, speaks to an audience of radiologists on meaningful use (something he does quite often, these days), he always asks for a show of hands to determine who is doing what with regard to demonstrating meaningful use of IT. Dreyer, vice chair of radiology computing... Read More »

Radiology and Meaningful Use: Questions Loom As Attestation Begins

November 28, 2011 | Feature

It was the radiology community’s version of the shot heard ‘round the world: in April 2010, the Continuing Extension Act of 2010 revised the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act’s definition of a hospital-based eligible professional to include hospital-based physicians practicing in outpatient settings, thereby... Read More »

Seeking Meaning in Meaningful Use

November 28, 2011 | Priors

The Medicare and Medicaid Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Programs provide for incentive payments to eligible professional who are meaningful users of certified EHR technology—and future downward adjustments for eligible professionals who fail to demonstrate meaningful use. The Medicare version of the program is generally applicable to primary-care... Read More »

Cloud-based Image-sharing Solution Gives On-demand Access to Images

November 25, 2011 | NONE

Streamlining interaction between imaging departments and referring clinicians not only saves time, lives, and duplicate studies, but can also improve productivity. One of the most powerful new approaches to eliminating the physical and networking barriers to image sharing is the use of cloud computing.

At the 2011 annual... Read More »

Rex Healthcare: Taking the Logical Next Step in Image Exchange

November 25, 2011 | NONE

As someone who has found himself—more than once—in a mad dash to catch the day’s last FedEx® pickup so that an out-of-town physician could have a patient’s images stat, Tom Hasley sees the wisdom of a cloud-based solution to image delivery. Hasley is systems support... Read More »

RSNA Image Share Network Enrolls First Patients

November 25, 2011 | NONE

Patients are at the center of control in an ongoing effort by the RSNA to standardize the way that medical images are shared on the Internet. In August 2011, The RSNA Image Share Network started enrolling its first patients to have images and reports stored electronically, through an online network... Read More »

Dose Reduction in Radiology: An Industrywide Initiative

October 21, 2011 | NONE

There is no more compelling story in radiology today than the urgency with which organized radiology and imaging modality vendors have come together to address the issue of dose management in radiology. Yes, more work lies ahead, and significant challenges remain—but the swiftness and decisiveness with which providers... Read More »

All Aboard California’s Dose-reduction Locomotive

October 21, 2011 | NONE

In September 2010, California Gov Arnold Schwarzenegger™ signed into law a measure mandating that radiologists include dose–length product or volume CT dose index in all reports. Such a development probably spurred many imaging service providers to begin thinking about radiation-dose–reduction initiatives, but Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center ... Read More »

UC Davis Medical Center Embarks on Journey to Reduce Dose by 20%

October 21, 2011 | NONE

Dose management (including dose-reduction strategies) is a dominant topic of conversation throughout the imaging world. Cross-disciplinary efforts to resolve the issue are moving to the forefront of both vendor and provider dockets, spurred on not least by quality metrics that tie reimbursement rates to patient outcomes.

At... Read More »

A Clearer View: Enriching Radiologist Workflow

September 16, 2011 | Productivity

The next frontier in radiologist workflow won’t be another enhancement to hanging protocols, a faster processor, or an improved graphical user interface, Eliot Siegel, MD, and Woojin Kim, MD, predict. Instead, these two experts in radiology informatics are looking outside the PACS and its workstations to offer radiologists... Read More »

Managing the Email Archive: Compliance and Complexities

July 16, 2011 | Productivity

Health-care IT professionals are no strangers to the complexities that arise from managing ever-growing archives. One particular subset of the data stored across the enterprise, however, might be overlooked: email archives. Although one analysis by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), Milford, Massachusetts—a market-research and analyst company—suggests that between 2007... Read More »

The Top Five Medical Imaging IT Projects of 2010

July 04, 2011 | Feature

When Radiology Business Journal was founded four years ago, it was with the understanding that IT represented not just the platform for image interpretation, exchange, and archiving, but also a broad foundation for practice operations, communications, and financial analysis. Earlier this year (and with that in mind), we approached... Read More »

The Plot Thickens on Meaningful Use for Radiology

July 04, 2011 | Priors

There is bad news and good news for radiology, when it comes to meeting meaningful-use requirements, according to Keith Dreyer, DO, PhD, vice chair of radiology computing and information sciences at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston. In the Dwyer Lecture, “Meaningful Use in Medical Imaging: New Technologies for... Read More »

Failure to Set Policy Tops List of Security Risks

February 20, 2011 | The Daily Grind

While RIS and PACS have become indispensable components of the electronic health record (EHR), they also pose risks to patient security and data integrity. These risks can range in scope from blaster worms to the curious technologist to just plain carelessness, and steps must be taken to secure the... Read More »

Data Conundrum: Ensuring Critical Access While Preserving Privacy

February 20, 2011 | Data Central

A health care provider that is too intent on protecting personally identifiable patient information could take patient privacy beyond the level that is optimal for patient care. At the Children’s Hospital (Denver, Colorado), however, Chris Goodale, radiology data systems administrator, prevented this problem by limiting access to radiology... Read More »

On Guard: A Tale of Two Security Settings

February 20, 2011 | Patient Privacy

Imaging information is becoming increasingly mobile: For evidence, look no further than the FDA’s recent approval of an app for the iPod, iPhone, and iPad that allows diagnostic use of MRI, CT, PET, and SPECT exams. With increased connectivity, however, comes an increase in vulnerability. Under pressure to... Read More »

Piggyback PACS: Pursuing Enterprise Image Management

February 16, 2011 | Feature

Radiologists have become PACS experts, sometimes by default. Because diagnostic images made the greatest demands on early information systems in health care, the most sophisticated systems were first developed to handle these images and associated data. These systems became PACS, which grew out of the homegrown image-management systems of... Read More »

Technical Advances: Radiation-sparing Techniques and Automated AV Tools

February 16, 2011 | NONE

Ask cardiac imagers from both sides of the care team—cardiology and radiology—what they see as the most critical advance in imaging technology, and their answers all have one thing in common: dose reduction. “Prospective gating (or step and shoot) is one; iterative reconstruction is another,” according to... Read More »

XDS-I: Blueprint for Image Exchange

February 16, 2011 | NONE

In 2005, Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) published the Cross-enterprise Document Sharing for Imaging (XDS-I) integration profile, extending the capabilities of XDS by incorporating DICOM instances and providing a blueprint for image exchange among disparate institutions. Nonetheless, the will remained weak through the latter half of the decade when it... Read More »

CDs: Migration Is Worth the Effort

February 16, 2011 | NONE

However daunting the concept might appear, migration to image sharing via Web portal or the cloud is seemingly well worth the effort, given the disadvantages of other options, such as paper printouts, film, and CDs. David S. Mendelson, MD, is chief of clinical informatics and director of radiology information... Read More »

Image Sharing:The Cloud, the Roadmap, and the Business Models

February 16, 2011 | Feature

Image sharing yields an impressive host of benefits. Patient care improves with timely physician access to images, and there are much-needed efficiency gains when examinations repeated due to the inability to access prior images are eliminated. While specifications for image exchange have surfaced in the past decade, few projects... Read More »

Health IT: Cornerstone of Health-care Reform

February 16, 2011 | Priors

When, today, you go to see suites of hospitals and systems, they have got a grand strategy for what they want to execute in the next 10 years. It’s not an exaggeration to say the whole thing depends on IT. Without IT, it’s not going to change. How... Read More »

Ace in the Hole

February 16, 2011 | Adview

While the pols dicker about whose health-care bill will save Medicare, a changing of the guard commences at the Office of the National Coordinator, and the states take their concerns to the courts, one thing has become increasingly clear: Without health IT to turn the vast web of discrete... Read More »

PHI Protection: Data at Rest, Data at Risk

January 16, 2011 | A Better Mousetrap

Since the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act went into effect in February 2010, regulations regarding health-care data security have become more stringent than ever before. For instance, the DHHS secretary is required to publish the names of covered entities that have experienced any data breach... Read More »

The Road to Enterprise Reliability: One RHIO’s Story

January 16, 2011 | Productivity

Every advance in imaging technology—the proliferation of slices per CT scan, the mounting use of MRI and CT to diagnose heart disease, and the increasing prevalence of digital mammography—also advances one IT challenge in particular: storing and protecting image information in the event of a disaster. “Imaging... Read More »