An amended complaint filed by the Illinois Attorney General in the per-click leasing complaint, initially filed by a whistleblower last year, parsed out a few more legal entities that operated the 19 named imaging centers, but failed to name any of the referring physicians in the complaint.

I recently attended an outpatient imaging center conference where, not surprisingly, surviving the DRA, dominated the discussion. It also was no surprise that increasing volume was the prevailing recommendation for solving the issue. Economically, it makes sense. When the price goes down, a company must attract more customers and serve them more

Two major imaging center organizations released their annual 10-K reports last month, providing the first official projections of the impact of the DRA on corporate imaging center companies. Not surprisingly, the DRA figured prominently in the risk factors section for both MQ Associates, Alpharetta, Ga, which owns MedQuest, and Alliance Imaging,

This year already has proven to be a busy one for legislative activity in radiology. The heightened level of interest has to do with several key factors. With the presidential election approaching in 2008, health care and its funding will continue to be a hot topic for debate; and as medical imaging costs and utilization continue to skyrocket,

Will Congress replace the sustainable growth rate (SGR) factor with an alternative spending target? Or will it scrap the whole system, including the resource-based relative-value scale (RBRVS) on which the Physician Fee Schedule is based?

The past few weeks have witnessed some rather remarkable national press reports about this marvelous profession that is the broad field of diagnostic imaging, and in each round of news coverage we have viewed both the opportunities and threats inherent in the practice of radiology in the public realm…well out of the shelter of the reading room.

In announcing that all network imaging centers must be accredited by March of next year, UnitedHealthcare, Minnetonka, Minn, has added accelerated the trend toward imaging center accreditation and technical privileging requirements, The United accreditation program applies to all participating freestanding imaging centers and physician offices and

The best path to profitability in a global economy is not technology but effective management of an organization’s human resources, according to Laurie Bassi and Daniel McMurrer, authors of “Maximizing Your Return on People” in the March issue of the Harvard Business Review. The authors contend that investments in human capital management (HCM) can