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.

Institutionalizing Innovation

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 Opportunity Knocks Now: Lead or Be Led

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.

Improving the Health-care Transaction

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.

California Radiation Protection Bill Signed into Law

Gov Arnold Schwarzenegger of California has signed into law a medical radiation protection bill aimed at protecting patients from excessive radiation exposure received during CT scans and radiation therapy procedures. Greasing the wheels for the first state law of its kind in the U.S., SB 1237, as the bill is known, mandates strict new procedures

How Radiology Volumes Impact Revenue

Radisphere

Four community hospitals, each located in a non-metropolitan area, sought to improve their radiology service. Each began to see improvements within about six months, and the gains were accomplished, for the most part, without adding new or better modalities.

The Next Generation of Outsourced Billing

MMP

The decision to outsource billing is one faced with increasing regularity by radiology groups seeking to trim costs while maximizing reimbursement. Within this larger decision also lies another conundrum: how to select the outsourced-billing approach that best suits the practice. Kevin Shepherd is chief development officer for Medical Management

Know the Market, Grow the Market: St Joseph Mercy Hospital

Sponsored by Hitachi Healthcare Americas

In today’s business environment, it is critical for health care organizations and their leaders to demonstrate a thorough understanding of their respective markets’ dynamics, needs and demands—and to make decisions accordingly, said Donna Wade in the “Know Your Market to Grow Your Market” session held on August 24 at the annual meeting of the AHRA:

Provider-based Restructuring: Approach With Caution

Freestanding imaging has come under fire in recent years, with a series of Medicare Physician Fee Schedule reimbursement cuts decimating revenue. Hospital-based imaging, on the other hand, has not absorbed as much impact, a reflection of the aligned-care model promoted by President Obama during the development and passage of health-reform

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.