Facility Management

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.

Medicare reimbursement for an FDG-PET scan could be reduced by nearly $500 if proposed changes to the hospital outpatient prospective payment system are enacted in 2005.

The government today announced its participation in one of the largest initiatives to date to determine effective neuroimaging techniques that will help chart brain changes associated with mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease. The announcement comes barely two weeks after Medicare agreed to reimburse for PET studies of suspected Alzheimer’s patients.

Cardiologists can make money owning CT scanners and performing coronary CT angiography, according to a presentation given at the North American Society for Cardiac Imaging meeting this week in Amelia Island, FL.