Facility Management

Siemens prepares to highlight syngo portals at SIIMAmicas focuses on patient and payer services

A set of healthcare reform funding options presented to the Senate Finance Committee has confirmed imaging provider fears about possible payment cuts. One option includes a Medicare Payment Advisory Commission proposal to recalculate the Medicare payment formula for the technical component of imaging services.

Buoyed by abundant cash and a profitable business formula, Alliance Healthcare is bucking the economic gloom that pervades the for-profit sector of medical imaging and implementing aggressive growth plans in 2009.

With obstacles to routine Medicare reimbursement of FDG-PET for most cancer cases cleared away, the imaging community is now focusing attention on private insurers and coverage policies that restrict access to the imaging technology.

The American College of Radiology Imaging Network has announced the first of two trials on clinical protocols for the use of coronary CTA in patients presenting to the emergency room with acute chest pain.

Software that improves image quality is on track to be a champion of CT dose reduction now and in the future.

Lately our political system has taken on religious trappings. We are asked to have faith in our institutions, in the leaders we elected, in our values…faith that these eventually will get us back to normalcy. In the long run, I have no doubt they will. It’s the near term that worries me.

Like Goldilocks testing the bears’ porridge, the American College of Radiology and other professional societies are using diagnostic reference level (DRL) data to tell radiologists if the patient dose radiation from their CT scanners is too hot or just right.

One of the first proven applications for multislice CT was trauma, a clinical role affirmed by past International Symposia on Multidetector-Row CT and the one going on now in San Francisco. Over the last several years, however, another issue -- patient radiation dose -- has surfaced, calling some MSCT applications into question. Any concerns about radiation dose are vastly outweighed, however, by the benefits of CT when it comes to dealing with trauma patients.

The Access to Medical Imaging Coalition has introduced an attractive new website designed to inform the public about the clinical capabilities and political controversies that surround diagnostic imaging practice.

Despite a dismal start to 2009, most U.S. hospital radiology administrators expect restrictions against capital acquisitions to ease, giving them a chance to address their most pressing needs and acquire diagnostic imaging equipment later this year.

Bucking the tide of medical professional opinion, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has decided against granting payment for CT colonography as a screening test for colorectal cancer. CMS ruled Tuesday that the clinical evidence remains inadequate to conclude that CTC is appropriate for that role.

Multiple studies have shown CT colonography to be just as efficacious and cost-effective as colonoscopy for colon cancer screening. Now Italian and U.S. researchers have found that CTC also does something colonoscopy cannot: simultaneously detect colorectal cancer and abdominal aortic aneurysms.

Dr. James Thrall, chair of the American College of Radiology Board of Chancellors, predicted during the opening session of the college’s annual meeting Sunday that Congress will adopt healthcare reforms in 2009 and that of all the pending proposals, Medicare legislation has the greatest likelihood of passage.

Financial penalties would be enforced against physicians who frequently recommend inappropriate medical imaging under a set of policy options outlined in a potentially influential report issued April 30 by the Senate Finance Committee.

The European Congress of Radiology always falls at a special time of year. The bleak months of January and February are over, the plants are starting to reemerge in the garden, and spring and summer lie ahead.

A white paper on imaging preauthorization guidelines produced by the American College of Radiology and the Radiology Business Management Association has drawn mixed reactions, particularly among radiology benefit managers. The benefit managers agree that management programs may lack consistency and add costs. But they also worry the guidelines may weaken efforts to control imaging overutilization.

The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association has recommended boosting payments to primary care physicians and paying for them with cuts to imaging services. The suggestion came during a congressional hearing on healthcare reform held by the Senate Finance Committee. Imaging proponents say they will challenge any proposal lacking evidence to support it.

The American College of Radiology Imaging Network will expand its research scope beyond cancer to add applications that advance clinical care in areas such as neuro and cardiovascular imaging.

Other headlines:FDA clears perfusion software

Of all the things uttered by President Clinton, the best remembered may be his questioning of what “‘is” is, an ignominious line prompted by an investigation that led eventually to his impeachment. Today that question can be legitimately asked with only a change in capitalization and pronunciation as the information technology world questions the significance of IS (information systems).

Automation is the grease that makes workflow glide. Single clicks and macros are lesser elements of this process. The real gains are made under the covers of IT systems by algorithms with preprogrammed agenda. Far more intelligent tools than these will soon be needed to handle the wave of EMRs gathering off the shores of U.S. healthcare.

GE strikes hospital alliance to develop connectivity SonoSite 1Q revenues look likely to slip

RIS and PACS vendors saw it coming a long time ago, a need to make data repositories work with IT the systems that drive workflow. The hybridization of RIS and PACS, preceded by interfaces that allowed the transfer of data between and among systems by different vendors, blazed a trail toward interoperability. This trail has now fanning out to super highway status to accommodate the spread of companies seeking to provide answers to IT questions that must be answered if the Obama initiative is to improve the efficiency of U.S. healthcare.