Lean services, Six Sigma™, and continuous process improvement: Call them what you will, techniques derived from the now-famous Toyota Production System (TPS) are growing in popularity as a means for health-care providers (and radiology, in particular) to reduce costs and improve efficiency and care—with minimal capital outlay.
Decision support might be able to remove the target taped to radiology’s back, according to a tandem presentation that was made by two of the specialty’s respected leaders on May 3, 2010, at the annual meeting of the American Roentgen Ray Society in San Diego, California. Pat A. Basu, MD, MBA, explained how that target came to be there in the first
Defining quality in radiology seems simple: It’s an accurate diagnosis or interpretation, provided in a timely manner, in a clear and easy-to-follow report. The devil is always in the details, though.
As the diagnostic work-up for breast cancer has become more complex, often involving multiple imaging modalities, the surgeon-centered diagnostic paradigm in breast care has become less efficient. With the introduction of breast MRI into the diagnostic armamentarium, the need for a new radiologist-centered work-up became evident.
If there is one key thing that patients want from health care, this is it: that they come away from the encounter in better shape. Payors—including the government, insurers, employers, and, increasingly, patients—are now demanding that these encounters be more affordable, and they are less tolerant of mistakes.
Over the past decade, economic forces driving health care in the United States have removed many patient-care decisions from the hands of physicians. Fortunately, payment reform might change this. Physicians, including radiologists, have the potential to be rewarded for delivering appropriate, necessary care.
When the McKinsey Global Institute (London) asked more than 1,400 executives how important innovation was to their companies’ future growth, 70% said it was crucial, but only 35% were very confident in their ability to execute it.
The attorney for six interventional radiologists who have been barred, under an exclusivity contract, from practicing at three Sutter Health hospitals in the greater Sacramento, California, area is warning physicians that if Sutter Health prevails in these cases, subspecialists at other hospitals might find that their hospital privileges are no
Over the past two decades, imaging has undergone revolutionary and evolutionary changes in both the clinical and nonclinical spheres. Part of this evolution has been the acceptance of imaging as an endpoint or marker for evaluation of the efficacy of therapy in clinical trials. As a result, new doors have opened for the involvement of radiologists
The winning entry, left, in a recent vendor-sponsored preclinical- imaging competition presented at the World Molecular Imaging Conference in Kyoto, Japan, compared the amyloid-binding efficacy of the imaging agent 125I- SAP (in use in Europe, but not approved for use in the United States) with a novel peptide tracer devised by the researchers, in
Maybe your PACS vendor is going out of business, or the system is so creaky that your vendor no longer offers support. Perhaps your hospital signed an exclusive purchasing agreement that requires a new PACS from a different vendor. Maybe your new department chair just prefers a different system. Any of these causes could conspire to put you in the
There is a growing national discussion focused on the business model of publishing, in this era of niche media—especially as it relates to how we, as information consumers, prefer to receive and access this information. Actually, the discussion is not new at all, since so-called narrowcasting has been in the media-management lexicon for a number of
