Facility Management

Paperwork for hospitals and facilities using teleradiology services has gotten easier since the government enacted interim guidelines relaxing billing requirements for out-of-state interpretations. Final regulations should be in place by April.

VitalWorks changes name, completes medical division saleIT developer VitalWorks has completed the sale of its medical division to Cerner for $100 million in cash. The company announced Nov. 15 a definitive agreement to sell the division, following its decision to focus on radiology IT systems. With the deal now finished, the company has changed its name to Amicas and moved its headquarters to the Boston digs of this PACS vendor, which VitalWorks acquired in late 2003.

Faced with possible Medicare payment cuts, the American College of Radiology plans to lobby Congress for legislation that would require Medicare to define physician qualifications for performing diagnostic imaging.

Virtual colonoscopy took a roller coaster ride last year. Some peer-reviewed studies touted the technique, while others favored conventional colonoscopy. Experts on each side complained of flaws in the other side's methodology. With that background, an international working group has developed a standardized reporting system for CT colonography.

The Sequoia Imaging Center of Visalia, CA, was to be a full-service operation, featuring everything digital from MR to DR. But it almost didn't happen, at least not by the scheduled grand opening. As the deadline approached, digital radiography was threatening to make a mess of it. Director of imaging services, Gordon Ah Tye, was fed up.

Volume at the imaging center has improved over the past year, although revenue has remained flat. The billing manager explains that the center faces personnel problems: Employees have refused to take the necessary steps to ensure that complete and accurate information is captured for each patient. As a result, an increasing number of claims are being denied, and the billing staff is doing extra work to correct and refile these procedures. It seemed that terminating an employee for her bad attitude might help, but the current staff is falling into the same patterns. The billing manager suggests hiring an additional employee for insurance claims follow-up.

Physician credentialing and benchmarking are two of seven draft recommendations the influential Medicare Payment Advisory Commission is considering as part of an effort to define strategies to reduce escalating Medicare imaging costs.

For the better part of a decade, system manufacturers have eyed the DR market with growing anticipation, focusing blockbuster hopes on it, but realizing only modest returns. Their faith in the future of this segment fueled the development of early-stage systems.

How well a patient can count, remember word lists, or perform other basic tests may not indicate how far Alzheimer's dementia has progressed biologically, researchers said at the RSNA meeting.

The use of expert witnesses in radiology malpractice cases had a few defenders, but it continued to draw fire in a pro-and-con debate Monday.

How well a patient can count, remember word lists, or perform other basic tests may not indicate how far Alzheimer’s dementia has progressed biologically, researchers said Wednesday afternoon.

Even highly experienced radiologists can overlook cancers, a fact that bedevils breast imagers. Double reading has been shown to help inexperienced readers and increase cancer detection rates. It turns out that even old hands at mammography can also benefit from the practice.

Digital mammography is inevitable. People may argue over the details, but everyone accepts the fact that screen-film mammography-radiology's last major analog holdout-cannot stand forever.

The American Medical Association has approved a Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) code for use of dual energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA) to perform spinal imaging as a means for assessing the presence of vertebral fractures in osteoporosis patients. Guidelines for implementing the CPT code are still being worked out. Reimbursement is still further away. But the development of the code, the end result of some five years of lobbying by proponents of bone mineral densitometry, is a critical first step.

Sales of gamma cameras have been flat for so long they have become one of the few certainties in the otherwise unpredictable marketplace of medical imaging. True to form, the two factors in a major predictor of future change, equipment orders versus sales, were virtually equal for gamma cameras in the first half of 2004 at about $185 million for North American customers. But there is reason to believe that will change and that the progenitor of this change will be SPECT/CT.

Toshiba's strength in CT is an outgrowth of its development of sensor technologies in key modalities. Efforts in CT have produced a 64-slice detector, which will be showcased at the RSNA meeting as part of a continuum of engineering that already extends to a 256-slice detector prototype. The company will display the prototype as evidence of its technological prowess.

Radiology's cardiac turf losses are legion: cardiac catheterization, cardiac angioplasty, echocardiography, and nuclear cardiology. Today, another turf battle is taking shape: control of cardiac CT and MR.