Gary Becker, MD, outgoing president of the RSNA, read members the equivalent of the riot act in his presidential address on November 29 in Chicago, Illinois, kicking off the 2009 meeting and jump-starting the quality-improvement movement in radiology.

A rapid-fire series of radiation-related events, beginning in mid-2009 and continuing into 2010, culminated in the recent bombshell that the FDA would begin regulating medical radiation. Both the industry and the specialty continue to reverberate.

It is taxing enough for radiology and IT decision makers to contend with the image-management consequences of multidetector CT, high–field-strength MRI, 3D reconstructions, and various recent other trends responsible for a rising tide of diagnostic data. Added to this are the burdens created by other disciplines across the enterprise when they use

Marketing radiology services can represent a significant challenge, particularly in an increasingly consumer-driven medical marketplace, where outreach to patients requires reconfiguring a familiar line of messaging. Nancy McNee Newell, vice president of marketing for Diagnostic Health Corp (DHC), Birmingham, Alabama, calls it the softer side of

Alicia VasquezDeclining technical revenues have become a way of life for imaging practices, but that doesn’t mean that they are taking the situation lying down: “Having a proactive stance and an ongoing application of strategies to compensate for decreases, head on, is a must for facilities with a will to survive,” according to Michael Bohl,

Don Trexler, CEO of Baton Rouge Radiology Group (BRRG) in Louisiana, wants his practice to be different from a typical imaging group. “We’re a full-service radiology firm,” he says. “The radiology market, in general, is becoming more and more price conscious. To be in a leadership position when it comes to contract negotiations, we have to make it

From May 2007 to January 2008, an Atlanta, Georgia-based radiologist signed and submitted thousands of reports in his name, with one major caveat—he didn’t review a single one. Instead, he delegated the work to his radiology practitioner assistants (RPAs), who interpreted the exams and prepared the reports. In November 2009, the US Department of

After Congress passed the DRA, reducing Medicare reimbursements for imaging services, the radiology landscape has never been the same. This is especially true for joint ventures between radiology groups and hospitals to provide outpatient imaging, according to Richard Townley, MBA, president and CEO of AGI Healthcare Group, a consultancy