The answer to that question may appear obvious to imaging informatics professionals, but a study released earlier this year by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) disputed the ability of health informatics to reduce health care cost. Now, all of us in radiology have seen the ability of informatics to reduce imaging costs within the radiology

Accreditation is important to radiology providers not only in ensuring reimbursement eligibility and protecting turf, but in creating the opportunity to make needed operational changes, according to David M. Yousem, MD, MBA. Yousem, who is professor of radiology and director of neuroradiology at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, Baltimore,

A rising tide lifts all boats, as the saying goes, and thanks to the hastening deployment of subspecialty teleradiology, some of the smallest imaging-department boats are riding high. This is good news for patients in rural areas, who can now stick with their local hospitals for their imaging needs. It’s good news for those hospitals, too, because

The US Navy deployed its first PACS—a military-specified system with limited functionality—in 1996. Since then, the Navy has operated multiple PACS from a variety of vendors, all selected through a contracting process monitored by the US Department of Defense (DoD). “Our purchasing process enables us always to select the best of breed,” Edwin Doorn

The server requirements of any modern hospital are daunting; the back-end processing power necessary to operate multiple health information systems across an enterprise of any size requires an ever-shifting configuration of blades, proxies, failover systems, and disaster-recovery solutions. It’s no wonder, then, that a five-hospital system with 2

“The more you see, the better you are,” Javier Beltran, MD, FACR, says. “You’re exposed to so much pathology that you’ve seen it all, at the end of the day. It brings your expertise to another level.” Beltran is talking about what might be called extreme subspecialization. Beltran is a musculoskeletal radiologist. He estimates that he personally

How do you acquire the high–field-strength open MRI unit of your dreams in a tough economy? Unless you had already budgeted a cool million before the economy tanked, it may be difficult. David Nelson, director of outpatient imaging for BayCare Health System, Clearwater, Fla, overcame his lack of comfort with open systems last year and did just that

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), signed into law on February 17, includes $19 billion in funding for health care IT initiatives through the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH). How these funds will be distributed, however, remains unclear, and radiology practices and hospital