In an environment where radiologists are consistently being asked to do more with less, a simple increase in production is no longer a viable remedy to a problem. Practice managers and physician owners need to work smarter, instead of just harder. Using business intelligence data for predictive analytics, they are beginning to run their practices more efficiently, but also more effectively, challenging the status quo and using data to affect change. 

Like water in the desert, data has become the new currency in health care.  Data availability has become so important that two payors are investing $80 million in a health insurance exchange in California that will include information on more than a quarter of that state’s 38 million residents.

Blue Shield of California and WellPoint’s Anthem Blue Cross will invest $80 million on a health information exchange (HIE) in California that would make the medical records of nine million beneficiaries—representing more than a quarter of the state's population—available to network physicians and hospitals.

LAS VEGAS, August 1, 2014 –Current economic factors have created many challenges for hospitals and medical providers, yet one radiology practice is defying the odds.  As Nevada’s largest provider of leading-edge diagnostic and interventional imaging, Las Vegas-based Desert Radiologists has emerged as one of the country’s largest and most successful private radiology practices.

According to the results of a survey published today by global analytics company Towers Watson, more U.S. companies plan to increase the use of telemedicine to lower healthcare spending costs in 2015. Telemedicine has the potential to deliver more than $6 billion in healthcare savings per year to U.S. companies, according to the report.

The fall season is commonly known as the time that people get "back on track". Healthcare is no exception. With the official ICD-10 transition deadline finally announced, radiology practices can get back to the business of preparing physicians and staff for the new coding implementation.

In an NPR story, some professional societies and associations expressed concern over a new report from the Insitute of Medicine that calls for more accountability in the distribution of funding for medical graduate education. 

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced late last week that October 1, 2015, is officially the new transition date for the International Classification of Diseases 10th Revision (ICD-10) coding system in healthcare claims.