Forget about all of the work waiting for you when you get back, there are so many compelling reasons to attend an annual meeting of one of radiology’s specialty organizations. Hearing new ideas from peers and experts, shopping for technology, software or services and networking are the obvious reasons. In this climate of change and uncertainty, one also hopes to lift one’s head from the electronic grindstone and recharge the batteries. On all of these fronts, the recent meeting of the Radiology Business Management Association did not disappoint.
In fact, I think I even detected the return of a spirit of optimism among the leaders and business managers of radiology practices. Maybe, eight years of battering at the hands of CMS has had the happy side effect of generating a new resourcefulness that is in turn generating new ideas—and a sense of hopefulness.
Optimism is an important and critical component in completing radiology’s next mission, and that is optimizing the application of its spectacular technological innovation of the past several decades, innovations that have transformed the practice of medicine. There is no way that I could say it better than Bruce J. Hillman, MD, and Jeff C. Goldsmith, PhD, in the conclusion of their excellent 2011 book from Oxford Press, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, How Medical Imaging Is Changing Health Care.”
They wrote: “Imaging science has enormous future potential to save both lives and money. Innumerable advances in imaging that could improve patient care are queued up in the development pipeline. To enjoy the fruits of imaging innovation in the future, it is essential to figure out how more efficiently to translate into medical practice the most valuable technologies and shelve the ones that are duplicative and wasteful.”
“How to use these powerful tools more thoughtfully and pay for them in a way that fosters continued technical and care delivery innovation is one of the most difficult challenges facing medicine over the next two decades,” they wrote. “If caregivers and policymakers can remain optimistic and work together, they’ll ultimately get it right.”
Was I the only one who noticed this return of optimism? I heard it in a talk by Jon Copeland and Thomas Tiffany, PhD, on the potential for radiology to partner with pathology to make available the lion’s share of the data physicians need to make decisions. I heard it in Syed Zaidi, MD’s talk on Imaging 3.0, in which he described his strategy for formal co-management—as opposed to the kind taken for granted—of a hospital’s radiology service line.
If you were there, let me know if you heard it too.
Vice President, Executive Editor, Radiology Business
Cheryl began her career in journalism when Wite-Out was a relatively new technology. During the past 16 years, she has covered radiology and followed developments in healthcare policy. She holds a BA in History from the University of Delaware and likes nothing better than a good story, well told.