June/July 2012

In recent years, health-care reform (in all its guises) has spurred providers to investigate new methods and models for delivering services to inpatients and outpatients alike. Some do not affect radiology, but others have major ramifications for the way that imaging is delivered, managed, and paid for, as well as for the integration of radiology

A decade ago, the executive team of Virginia Mason Hospital and Medical Center (VMHMC) in Seattle, Washington, flew to Japan for training in the Toyota Production System (TPS), a continuous–process-improvement method pioneered by the automobile manufacturer. Lucy Glenn, MD, chair of VMHMC’s radiology department, says, “We began to understand how

Times of change generally present increased opportunity for those willing to find the right door and open it. With hospitals merging, buying practices, and acquiring imaging centers, there is just such an opportunity, in health care, to rectify what many believe is a paucity of radiology representation in the upper echelons of hospital

One hallmark unites the winning entries in the top five medical-imaging IT projects of 2012, cosponsored by Radiology Business Journal and the Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine (SIIM): Each project represents a view beyond the traditional acquisition, archiving, and communication of radiological images. All of the winning entries take a

An article by Milliman actuaries¹ in the April 2012 issue of Health Affairs details an interesting accounting exercise that is likely to cause private insurers to take notice. Using a method employed to evaluate new insurance features, the researchers created an actuarial model designed to estimate the cost (and cost benefit) of lung-cancer

As radiologists, we work in the options trade without even realizing it. Every day, we help clinicians make the best decisions by providing them with opportunities termed real options. These options are analogous to their financial counterparts, such as options on stocks. For example, when you buy a stock option, you have bought the right (but not

Radiology practices took a blow when CMS invoked the Multiple Procedure Payment Reduction (MPPR) for professional-component services provided to the same patient in the same session by the same physician on the same day, beginning in January 2012. The specialty narrowly avoided an even greater indignity—that the MPPR be applied to such studies read

High-tech communication in 2012 is undeniably fast and efficient, but does it build trust? Among referring physicians who rely on radiologists, the question transcends the objective nature of science and drifts into the subjective world of personal relationships.

Radiologists who held medical directors’ positions with hospitals and health systems collected a median of $32,353 annually, and those who took weekend call earned a median of $2,000 in call compensation, according to a survey¹ conducted and published by the Medical Group Management Association. Medical directors’ compensation, at the low end, was

I have written frequently about the implications of economic turbulence in radiology; we are facing some now, and others will unfold in the months and years ahead. These far-reaching implications concern nothing less than the survival of some private radiology practices and the death of fee-for-service payment. Our current economic model is