Tom Petty has been a big part of my life for as long as I can remember. I watched his music videos in awe as a young kid, learned his songs on the guitar as a teenager and saw him play live with the Heartbreakers multiple times as an adult.
The health IT holy grail of nationwide interoperability remains top of mind in theory yet miles away in practice. The daunting distance of the road ahead was thrown into sharp relief in early October, when Health Affairs published American Hospital Association (AHA) survey data from 2015 showing that two of three U.S. hospitals can’t locate, retrieve, send and/or meaningfully integrate the electronic medical records (EMRs) of patients who received care at other provider sites (Health Aff (Millwood). 2017 Oct 1;36(10):1820-1827).
In this new age of social media and physician scrutiny, the message is coming through loud and cloud to a growing number of radiologists: define your brand before it defines you.
It’s a question that comes up time and time again in medical imaging: How should incidental findings be handled by the radiologist? Should they be included in the radiology report or just ignored? While radiologists don’t want to alarm patients, they also realize that not reporting a finding could have devastating results for the patient and involve the radiologists in malpractice litigation. There also are potential cost savings to consider. At a time when quality is being emphasized over quantity, reducing the number of unnecessary follow-up exams is a priority throughout all of radiology.
