Radiology departments and practices have begun to gravitate away from fee for service and into the realm of risk and value-based medicine.

After a false start or two, CMS has set a final ICD-10 implementation deadline for October 1, 2015, as widely expected. 

When it comes to electronic communications for radiology, it’s all in the workflow, says Andrew Wells, MD, a radiologist with Hendersonville Radiological Consultants, an eight-partner practice that covers three hospitals in western North Carolina.

When Schuylkill Health in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, started evaluating PACS to replace an existing system, a radiology information system (RIS) was not on the shopping list. The radiology department that served two hospitals and two specialty imaging centers used a hospital information system that had provided basic RIS functionality.

Modest projected growth in the U.S. economy will help propel increases in health spending beyond growth in the GDP over the coming decade, according to a report from CMS published in Health Affairs.

CMS just got an earful from the ACR on the proposed 2015 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule. At 38 pages long, the letter covered the gamut of concerns—the savaging of individual codes, a matter of pre-study bias and a litany of woes pertaining to dubious methods of calculating practice expenses.

As much as 12 percent of the $100 billion spent on imaging each year is unnecessary, and the primary reason is defensive medicine, according to a new report on the imaging market from the research company peer60, American Fork, Utah.

There's much to observe as the Obama Administration prepares for the upcoming open enrollment period for the federal health insurance exchange (HIX). The initial problem-laden rollout of the program online, followed by countless exceptions, extensions and delays, has cost billions of unplanned dollars and human resources, and all hope is pointed toward a smooth reenrollment for this year.