In 2005, Lima Memorial Health System (LMHS), Lima, Ohio, was managing its 100,000 imaging studies per year through a traditional hospital–radiologist relationship. LMHS contracted with a 10-member radiology group that handled all of the health system’s imaging, and according to a longstanding policy within the group, each member was paid an equal

If service, patient safety, and profit weren’t incentives enough, now hospitals and imaging clinics have another inducement to go digital: the Obama administration’s federal health care stimulus plan, which stresses health care IT and electronic medical records.

It’s as extreme a transition as any IT professional could imagine: moving from a remotely hosted RIS to a fully integrated RIS/PACS over the course of just a few short months. Bill Cummins and his team, however, had ample motivation to make the switch. The director of medical imaging at Cheyenne Regional Medical Center (CRMC) in Wyoming had seen

The Obama administration is pursuing an aggressive timetable to deliver on a campaign promise to make affordable health care available to all US residents. Though the task is daunting, the original timetable of late autumn is still achievable.

In a session at this month’s meeting of AHRA: The Association for Medical Imaging Management in Las Vegas, Nevada, Lyn M. Mehlberg, BS, CNMT, FSNMTS, a self-described regulations junkie, predicted that regulators—including the Joint Commission, CDC, OSHA, and CMS—are poised to come down hard on radiology on the issue of infection control in

Ever since digital imaging liberated radiologists from the site of image acquisition, radiology practices have labored to patch together distributed reading solutions that would efficiently meet the needs of multiple clients, balance workflow, and enable subspecialization.

According to David M. Yousem, MD, MBA, serving on your hospital’s credentialing committee is far more important than you might think. While it’s not typically a highly prized experience, deciding on physicians’ privileges has direct and lasting impacts on patient care, on the hospital’s reputation, on liability exposure, and on the procedural turf

In June, an alliance of health care providers, technology vendors, and imaging organizations announced the formation of the Imaging e-Ordering Coalition, an initiative aimed at promoting health-IT–enabled clinical decision support as a means of determining the appropriateness of diagnostic imaging services. Members of the coalition include the ACR;