Despite serious reimbursement pressure, the imaging-center market appears to be on the move again, adding 131 sites as of the first quarter of 2012. While this year’s expansion does not approach the tremendous growth rates of the period between 2000 and 2008, when the market more than doubled (from 3,068 centers to 6,431), it does return the sector

Since the passage of the DRA, and through subsequent hits to reimbursement for imaging, one question has been perennial in the radiology community: How can radiologists raise their profile with patients without sacrificing productivity (or profitability)? John A. Patti, MD, chair of the ACR® board of chancellors, suggests that radiologists should

With a bundled-payment pilot program instituted by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act set to begin in 2013, it is interesting (and perhaps instructive) to look at a three-year CMS project nearing its endpoint—the Acute Care Episode (ACE) Demonstration1 for orthopedic and cardiovascular surgery—through the eyes of one participating

Buy a banana, and it will cost you less than a dollar per pound—unless you’re in a hotel, where it might cost you twice the grocery-store price. The prices of many items readily obtainable by the consumer usually fall within a well-defined range, according to supply and demand. This is not so in health care (in general) and in medical imaging

October 1, 2013, ushers in a new era in coding. That is when health-care providers in all categories will be required to submit claims to CMS using the new ICD-10 codes. These codes must be used for all HIPAA transactions, including outpatient claims with dates of service—as well as on inpatient claims with dates of discharge—on and after October 1

The growth of imaging-center chains was flat last year as owners absorbed a new round of reimbursement cuts in the form of higher equipment-usage rates and multiple-procedure payment discounts. Independent-chain owners primarily held their own or shed centers—and despite reports of hospital buying sprees, the chill extended to the country’s largest

An exploration of the use of RFID technology to manage contrast inventory in the hospital setting identified potential cost savings, as well as implications for patient safety, inventory management, and billing

A compendium of the business intelligence required to launch a CCTA service