Business Intelligence

Providers utilize business intelligence to monitor referral patterns and collaborate with clinicians who order their services. Such analytics tools have also been deployed in the specialty to improve productivity, track patient satisfaction and bolster quality.

ACR Revises Guidelines For Radiation Therapy Following Squamous Cell Carcinoma Resection

The American College of Radiology (ACR) has revised its appropriateness criteria for the use of radiation therapy following surgical resection of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma. The revised guidelines appear in the July issue of Oral Oncology.

Cuts In Proposed CMS Rule Will Drive Radiologists From Practice, ACR Says

Coupled with drastic cuts to imaging services over the past five years, significant and unwarranted medical imaging cuts in the Proposed Medicare Fee Schedule Rule for 2012 formulated by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will drive many imaging providers from practice, restrict access to care even for procedures not specifically

CareCore National, UAW Launch RBM Pilot

CareCore National, the nation’s largest specialty benefits manager, has announced it is partnering with the United Auto Workers (UAW) Retiree Medical Benefits Trust to administer a radiology benefits management solution, on a pilot basis, for a 30,000-member subset of the latter's more than 840,000 retired UAW members, including their dependents.

Americans Mistrustful of Government's Ability to Support Medicare, Poll Shows

Health care may rank a distant second to the economy and jobs when it comes to issues on which voters would like lawmakers and Presidential candidates to focus, but Americans generally are not confident that Congress and private insurers can keep Medicare financially sound

Managing Expectations

Editor Cheryl Proval and I had the privilege of moderating a very interesting and animated session at the recent RBMA meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana. It was a face-to-face panel discussion with the CEOs of each of the five radiology benefit management (RBM) companies. Anticipation built during the conference, and the attendees were definitely

Performance Analytics: What Billing Can Tell You

Medical billing is the process of translating a physician’s work into reimbursable language understood by governmental and private third-party payors. The billing process must start with the physician’s documentation of patient encounters, which forms the basis for billing. The physician’s documentation is then translated into a CPT® code

Quantifying Interventional Radiology’s Tangible Value

In recent years, interventional radiologists have had an easier time with the long-standing challenge of impressing their diagnostic colleagues with the intangible worth of a clinical interventional-radiology service. A radiology practice with clinical feet on the street has at least a fighting chance of outrunning a remote teleradiology service.

Around the web

The ACR hopes these changes, including the addition of diagnostic performance feedback, will help reduce the number of patients with incidental nodules lost to follow-up each year.

And it can do so with almost 100% accuracy as a first reader, according to a new large-scale analysis.

The patient, who was being cared for in the ICU, was not accompanied or monitored by nursing staff during his exam, despite being sedated.