When the 16 hospitals of the Western North Carolina Health Network (WNCHN) sat down to create a federated model for a health information exchange (HIE) four years ago, they could find no examples of unaffiliated institutions sharing health data, so WNCHN essentially began with a tabula rasa.

Sharing images across any health care enterprise represents a challenge, but doing so across the Pacific Rim was the dilemma faced in 2003 by the US Air Force. Taking up this challenge were Lt Col Grant Tibbetts, MD, now radiology consultant to the surgeon general, and Tom Lewis, the director of the Air Force PACS Office. “The largest hospital in

On October 6, 2009, four physicians gathered in Stamford, Connecticut, to participate in a discussion moderated by Cheryl Proval, Radinformatics.com editorial director.

The nation’s hospitals eluded a $1 billion pay cut on October 1, when the 2010 Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) went into effect, because CMS chose not to include a negative 1.9% update for payments to hospitals as originally proposed. On the other hand, imaging-technology owners in the freestanding outpatient and in-office settings are

Growth in outpatient advanced imaging has declined significantly from its peak in 2004. At that time, outpatient CT and MRI exam volumes were growing at approximately 10% each per year. From 2009 to 2013, however, imaging experts at The Advisory Board Co, Washington, DC, estimate that growth for these modalities will slow to approximately 5%

A recent New Yorker article¹ shone a harsh light on the city of McAllen, Texas, where Medicare data suggest that health care costs are nearly twice as high as the national average. Garnering less attention was the example that the author (surgeon Atul Gawande, MD, MPH) gave of a community where health care delivery functions efficiently and

A convergence of factors shaping the current health care environment—including some key regulatory changes—has caused many health systems to reevaluate their broad array of physician relationships in an effort to determine the optimal hospital–physician alignment strategy. This is particularly true of medical imaging arrangements, as hospitals

Tight credit markets may have lengthened timelines, but hospital systems across the United States continue to move aggressively into their communities to fulfill outpatient imaging strategies. The consulting group Sg2 (Chicago, Illinois) predicts 19% growth in outpatient imaging in the 10-year span between 2008 and 2018, representing 90% of total