Economics

This channel highlights factors that impact hospital and healthcare economics and revenue. This includes news on healthcare policies, reimbursement, marketing, business plans, mergers and acquisitions, supply chain, salaries, staffing, and the implementation of a cost-effective environment for patients and providers.

Merger Mania’s Implications for Imaging IT

Ask any health–IT executive for a synonym for change, and a probable response is merger/acquisition. The rapid pace of consolidation among physician practices, individual hospitals, hospital enterprises, and hospital-chain corporations has generated an unprecedented level of organizational, operational, and technological change.

Merger Mania: Radiology Seeks a Foothold in a Consolidating World

It’s not a figment of your imagination: Radiology practices are getting larger via mergers/acquisitions. Hospitals are broadening their reach, using the same tactics, in their efforts to maintain regional influence.

The Value Agenda: When the Prescription Kills the Patient

From the man who imprinted the definition of value on health care’s collective forehead comes a prescription for the rescue of global health: Business guru Michael E. Porter (with Thomas H. Lee)¹ shares “The Strategy That Will Fix Health Care” in the October issue of Harvard Business Review. The article builds on everything that Porter has written on health care in the past to provide a solution with sheer simplicity at its center: Maximize value for patients by achieving the best outcomes at the lowest cost.

Another Perspective

I read with interest the recent article by Cynthia Keen, “When a Hospital Replaces a Private Practice.”¹ The featured group is portrayed as an example of the type of practice that currently is being replaced by teleradiology companies. Poor customer service, substandard turnaround times, suboptimal call coverage, and lack of peer review are among the alleged failings.

Blink: Health Care is Consolidating, but the Tough Work Lies Ahead in True Integration

June, a month long prized by brides, had a strong matrimonial pull on health-care providers, with a pair of announced mergers/acquisitions that created two massive health systems, one for profit and one nonprofit. Several other key mergers announced and expected to be completed this year highlight the diversity of the hospital players and their deals, but all share a common denominator: There is a pervasive ambition to grow.

Imaging-center Growth Hits the Wall in 2013; Volumes Plummeted in 2011

Persistent decreases in outpatient imaging reimbursement and a dramatic decline in volume finally took their toll on the imaging-center market, with a resulting 3.65% decline in the total number of freestanding outpatient imaging centers. This is the first contraction since the dip that followed the stock-market crash in 2009.

Connecting With Patients, Search by Search

In today’s health-care landscape, how can you expand your volume in the face of falling reimbursements, competition from larger health-care systems, and increasingly complex regulations? How do practiceas, imaging centers, and radiology departments increase revenue and margins—and address the challenges of patients’ tight budgets?

ICD-10 Is Coming: How to Ensure an Optimal Transition

Once again, there is an official implementation date for ICD- 10: October 1, 2014. In some circles, there is still much discussion as to whether this date, too, will be moved. While no one can predict the future in the ever-changing healthcare regulatory environment, it is highly unlikely that the date will be pushed further into the future, given

Around the web

The patient, who was being cared for in the ICU, was not accompanied or monitored by nursing staff during his exam, despite being sedated.

The nuclear imaging isotope shortage of molybdenum-99 may be over now that the sidelined reactor is restarting. ASNC's president says PET and new SPECT technologies helped cardiac imaging labs better weather the storm.

CMS has more than doubled the CCTA payment rate from $175 to $357.13. The move, expected to have a significant impact on the utilization of cardiac CT, received immediate praise from imaging specialists.