Facility Management

For the medical profession to continue to grow and thrive, trainees must be given meaningful opportunities to actively care for patients. New blogger Dr. Arun Krishnaraj discusses how that’s happening now and how it can be made better, for patients as well as doctors.

When we ask radiologists about their collections, they usually say, “We capture most of our revenue, but you know how radiology is, you can’t collect it all.”

What is billed as an alliance may become the first step in a move that could position Virtual Radiologic as a national radiology group practice. The alliance will bring that company and S&D Medical into a workflow and technology partnership beginning Oct. 1.

It may turn out to be one of those “who would ever have thought that would happen?” kind of things. But in the world of U.S. politics, it might be exactly what’s needed.

Too often radiologists are far removed from the billing and collections process. Giving them a better understanding of the process, and the role their reports play in it, can improve collections and streamline the work that takes place in the back office.

Overutilization of medical imaging services exposes patients to unnecessary radiation and adds to healthcare costs, according to a report.

Three U.S. senators have joined the debate over the safety of x-ray based whole-body airport scanners, asking federal officials to review scanner health effects on travelers and airport and airline personnel.

The vacancy rate for radiographers has continued to decline in recent years and is now at 2.1%, according to a staffing survey recently conducted by the American Society of Radiologic Technologists.

This is the third and final article in a series reviewing why and how radiology practices set themselves up to lose their long-held professional services agreements. What steps groups can take to turn an adversarial relationship to a collaborative partnership is the subject of this third article. Included is a challenge to change how we conduct business, with the goal of long-term success for everyone involved.

Is it time to add another physician? We have asked this question quite a bit recently, especially on busy days, which seem to be happening more often. Because adding another full-time physician would be expensive-especially if we guessed wrong-we wanted to make sure that it really was time to expand.

To paraphrase Harry Truman, what virtual colonoscopy needs is a one-handed analyst. This was made clear earlier this week in the share price activity of iCAD , which leaped about 18% on news that the FDA had cleared the company’s VeraLook software for interpreting virtual colonoscopy exams. The next day the stock gave back about as much ground as it had gained.

A number of radiology practices were able to significantly reduce the radiation dose associated with multislice CT scans by participating in a one-day dose optimization workshop provided by the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Radiologists (RANZCR) and supported by the local state health department, according to a study in the August issue of the Journal of the American College of Radiology.

Are you ready to engage your partners in a serious conversation about aligning your practice around shared goals and challenges? If so, here is a series of steps you can take that move the practice in that direction.

Proposed new credentialing requirements could make it more difficult for hospitals to contract with teleradiologists to provide night and weekend call, a legal analysis concludes.

All across the country high-tech imaging volumes are flat or declining compared with last year.

Until we broke down the numbers, we didn’t realize that our practice’s overnight call coverage cost had increased by 200% in just three years. We had to take a close look at the root causes before we could agree on the solution.

Medical acronyms are intended to boost efficiency. The advantages of brevity should be weighed against the possibility of crypticness (making the communication harder for others to understand) and ambiguity (having more than one possible interpretation). In other words, a smart communicator uses good shortcuts but makes sure that other people will understand what he or she means.

Because of all the attention currently focused on radiation dose, a California imaging bill addressing radiation exposure has the potential to spread like wildfire to other states. California is a state that doesn’t wait for others to address a problem, so it’s possible similar bills could pop up around the country. The bill has passed the California senate and is now in the California Assembly Appropriations Committee with a hearing set for Aug. 4. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Pacoima) is lead sponsor of the bill.

From the hospital's perspective, a radiology group's quality is measured by quality assurance reporting, working well with others, participating on medical staff committees, and other administrative duties. Still, a highly competent radiology practice, one with "quality" radiologists, can lose a contract over basic service issues, nonphysician interpersonal relationships, or other common administrative expectations.

Most radiologists have fundamentally the same concerns: How do I maintain a good income? How do I balance the increasing demands of time/speed with my overall workload? Am I increasing my potential clinical risk? Wwhat is going to change next?

New supervision requirements for diagnostic services provided to hospital outpatients could threaten the ability of many hospitals to meet Medicare requirements for outpatient tests. The rules took effect July 1.

In a previous radiology lifetime (not so long ago), geography was the friend of the radiology group with an exclusive hospital professional services agreement. Life was tidier then, with turf carved out in a relatively collegial fashion among radiology practices who maintained a gentleman’s agreement not to compete across certain lines. Geographic distribution and a “moat” of agreed-upon boundaries provided a level of strength so groups could also exhibit an adversarial stance when dealing with hospital administration. And they frequently did. They also tolerated bad behavior among members of the group and, in some cases, seemed to view their contracts as entitlements.

Physicians can improve coding decisions by better understanding needle-based and catheter-based thoracentesis techniques.

Recruitment for radiologists has shifted from private radiology groups to hospitals and big teleradiology groups, according to national physician search firm Merritt Hawkins, an AMN Healthcare Company.

Not even two months have passed since a private equity firm snagged teleradiology provider Virtual Radiologic, but in that time the imaging industry has played host to several other such deals. The most recent was a bid by Hologic, announced earlier this week, to acquire privately held Sentinelle Medical. Others are Sonosite’s purchase of a different Canadian company, VisualSonics of Toronto, completed just a few days ago, and Covidien’s pending acquisition of ev3, a maker of interventional devices.

In a case that goes to the heart of privileging issues, six interventional radiologists associated with Radiological Associates of Sacramento have filed lawsuits against Sutter Health for refusing to allow them to perform procedures at Sutter facilities.

Virtual Radiologic, already a major player in the teleradiology field, aims to become a major player in the radiology IT space as well with the launch of a new suite of image management products.

Radiology groups pan call for FDA regulation of imaging dose; author defends position and urges more action by the specialty

Not everyone is convinced cumulative radiation dose exists, or even that repeat CT scans cause cancer.

Awareness can be a powerful tool. When 50 centers performing coronary CTA compared protocols, they found that some were exposing patients to 10 times the radiation dose others were.