Coronary CT angiography (CCTA) could be radiology’s most notorious underperformer. As the number of CT detectors increased from one to 256 and beyond, as the resulting images showed ever more exquisite detail of the chambers and vessels of the heart, CCTA nonetheless failed to overcome politics, sluggish reimbursement, and entrenched practice
Terry Owen is senior vice president of Florida Hospital in Orlando. He says, “We think the old days of fee for service, the high-water mark, are behind us.” What’s coming is some permutation of the accountable-care organization (ACO), with bundling of payment for services and outcomes-driven treatment. “If we get bundled pay for disease groups,
A buoyant tour of health-care reform greeted radiologists who gathered at the annual American Roentgen Ray Society meeting for the Caldwell Lecture, delivered by Benjamin K. Chu, MD, on May 3, 2010, in San Diego, California. If Chu seemed unusually upbeat, for a physician, about health-care reform, it might have been because the internist also is
The question of whether general radiology is on the path to obsolescence has sparked considerable debate in recent years, with much of the controversy centered on the contention that subspecialty radiologists are responsible for fewer errors than their generalist counterparts. Whether this contention is true or not, the trend toward
Physicians are in a real bind as fee-for-service reimbursement falls under attack and alternative payment methods (such as bundling and capitation) gain traction in Washington, DC. As of June 18, Medicare Part B claims were being processed with the 21.3% cut mandated by the sustainable growth rate’s formula, and House Democrats demanded legislation
Health-care reform is here, and it’s the DRA all over again (but on steroids). Adjustments to the RVU for equipment utilization have increased from 50% to 62.5% for 2010 and will be capped at 75% for 2011 (for MRI and CT only). On July 1, the reduction in CT, MRI, and ultrasound technical-component reimbursement for contiguous imaging increased
Consider this scenario: You have exercised your duties as a manager over the past several years by cutting costs where possible, but now, you have been ordered to make further administrative cost reductions of 10%, 20%, or even 30%, and you cannot fathom how it will be done. Does this sound familiar?
It began with the DRA, and ever since, CMS and Congress have set upon outpatient imaging like dogs on a bone, culminating in a new round of cuts to the technical component contained in the health-reform law. As a result, operations at many outpatient-imaging organizations came into acute focus in 2005, and they continue to be scrutinized.
Whenever the economic aspects of business get tough, do more with less is a phrase heard everywhere. Of course, doing more with less just means becoming more productive. There is no scarcity of literature on productivity, and some authors claim to have identified more than 20 definitions for productivity. Economists use the term to measure the
While radiologists have served in prominent positions in Washington, DC, in the past, none have ever served as White House fellow and special assistant to the president before the recent appointment of Pat Basu, MD, MBA, as one of 13 men and women to serve in the 2010–2011 class of fellows. An attending radiologist at Stanford University and the VA
As a journalism and media student in the early 1970s, I was exposed to what was just then emerging as an entirely new way of aligning the creators of information with those who were hungry to receive it. The selection and nurturing of the media outlets and conduits of critically important information into highly tailored segments were then brand
