In the year ahead, radiologists must continue to adapt to changes and rise to the evolving challenges delivered by health care reform, including better utilization of available data that are necessary to inform practice decisions and make long-term, significant changes to sustain their businesses, according to Mark Isenberg, Partner of Client Services with Zotec Partners. Isenberg discusses five topics with imagingBiz that should be on the radar for all radiologists in the coming year.

From the floor of the 100th Annual Meeting of the RSNA, buzzwords were a-flying—value-based medicine, Internet-based systems, storage in the cloud, zero-footprint viewers and plenty of compact imaging technologies. Attendees were deluged with demonstrations of new and updated imaging systems, clinical presentations, as well as updates on image processing, storage and sharing capabilities. From a big picture perspective, however, the message was clear—collaboration is key.

Somewhere in the neighborhood of 43 million Americans show overdue medical debt on their credit reports. And a lot of them don’t even know about it until a collector starts calling and their credit score has already been damaged. 

The business of healthcare continues to change and radiology groups are looking beyond the bare branches of low hanging fruit which have provided short-term fixes to various business and reimbursement challenges. 

BLUFFTON, SC AND FRANKLIN, TN – December 4, 2014 – CareCore National, LLC ("CareCore") and MedSolutions, Inc. ("MedSolutions"), two leading providers of Specialty Benefits Management (SBM) services to managed care organizations and risk-bearing provider organizations, today announced the completion of a merger that will help advance the companies‘ collective commitment to containing healthcare costs and achieving quality medical outcomes.

The Wall Street Journal released sobering analysis of basic spending by the American middle class this week based on consumer spending data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The report puts into stark relief the rising role of consumerism in healthcare delivery: Healthcare spending was up 24% and income rose a mere half percentage point.

Reading the morning newspapers (yes, the kind that leave black ink on the hands), I was struck by the current parallels between the medical imaging industry and agriculture.  In his Ahead of the Tape column in the Wall Street Journal, Spencer Jakab writes about the struggles of agricultural heavy equipment manufacturer Deere & Co, which is feeling the effects of falling crop prices.

Non-physician clinicians who have the authority to order imaging exams are much more likely to do just that than doctors presented with similar patient cases.