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.

Business 101: Goal Execution for Radiology

This article is the third installment in a four-part series on applying basic business concepts to radiology. To read the first installment, click here; to read the second, click here.

Users’ Guide: Due Diligence for Acquisitions

While there are many motivations to pursue an acquisition candidate, all acquirers share a common goal: increasing their net worth. The buyer evaluates opportunities to select acquisitions where the present value of the future economic benefits received is most likely to be greater than the purchase price. The goal of the due-diligence process is

Community Hospital Makes Strategic Post-reform Decision

In the aftermath of imaging reimbursement cuts and health care reform, provider organizations are looking at how to do more with less, and making purchasing decisions that position them to be able to accommodate the widest range of patients. That’s why Brian Wetzel, RT, CNMT, radiology administrator at 267-bed Lourdes Hospital in Binghamton, New

A Hospital C-suite Reality Check

A few converging issues have recently revealed a fissure in the otherwise strengthening position of hospitals and health systems in the competition for outpatient-imaging supremacy. I have written volumes about the importance of building a two-way, give-and-take model in hospital–radiology group relationships so that both parties can thrive. The

Mail Call September

I read your article, “Finger in the Wind,”¹ with interest.

ACR Seeks Practices to Test Quality Measures

The ACR is seeking volunteer practices to help the college test quality measures—including several PQRI measures—previously developed in collaboration with the American Medical Association/Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement (PCPI).

Beyond the Blame Game

It is not accuracy of interpretations, or contrast-media administration, or wrong-site surgeries, or infection control in the MRI suite. No, the specialty’s number-one safety issue is radiation exposure, subject of this month’s cover story. In a sadly ironic twist of fate, the very source of the profession’s power of inquiry has become its Achilles

MIPPA Accreditation Countdown: ACR, IAC, or Joint Commission?

In 2008, when Congress passed the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act (MIPPA), the January 2012 accreditation deadline for providers of advanced imaging seemed distant, but it’s near enough to call for action now. For those advanced diagnostic imaging services (ADIS) providers still unaccredited, the choices available in

Around the web

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

The nuclear imaging isotope shortage of molybdenum-99 may be over now that the sidelined reactor is restarting. ASNC's president says PET and new SPECT technologies helped cardiac imaging labs better weather the storm.

CMS has more than doubled the CCTA payment rate from $175 to $357.13. The move, expected to have a significant impact on the utilization of cardiac CT, received immediate praise from imaging specialists.