In the 1980s and 1990s, payor fees were generous for the newest modalities, and most freestanding imaging facilities were quite profitable. There was little need for advanced cost accounting. Imaging centers and facilities within physician’s offices proliferated, however. Payors became far more aggressive in discounting what they would pay. When

What’s expected of leaders in radiology has changed, Frank J. Lexa, MD, MBA, informed his audience at the 23rd Annual Economics of Diagnostic Imaging 2008: National Symposium on October 24, 2008, in Arlington, Va. Lexa is clinical professor of radiology at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center, Philadelphia, and adjunct professor of

Do you think that for-profit freestanding outpatient imaging is a phenomenon destined to go the way of Tyrannosaurus rex? Some people do. Some are betting that the resurgence of hospital and health system interest in the outpatient revenue stream will eventually dwarf the freestanding market, rendering it obsolete. I’m wondering whether this is a

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), signed into law on February 17, includes $19 billion in funding for health care IT initiatives through the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH). How these funds will be distributed, however, remains unclear, and radiology practices and hospital

Medicare made more than $36 million in payments to more than 56,000 physicians who participated in the Physician Quality Reporting Initiative in 2007. That’s the good news. The bad news is that only about half—52%—of the physicians who participated got paid, Bibb Allen, MD, chair, ACR Commission on Economics, told attendees at a special focus

More is unknown than known about how the $19.2 billion allocated to health IT by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) will be awarded and who will be eligible to receive funds. Anyone interested in participating in the reinvention of health care through IT—including radiology private practices and hospital radiology departments

In the publisher’s message for the inaugural issue of a new magazine, I wrote, in September 1987, “It will come as no surprise to you, an information leader, that the age of information has arrived bearing a new set of problems impacting business and industry. The main problem that has developed is how to demystify high technology and transform

The authors believe that the ARRA largely leaves the specialty out in the cold