On October 1, 2014, healthcare practices will be required to use a revised version of the International Classification of Diseases code: ICD-10.

Diagnostic Imaging Group, an outpatient imaging chain with 36 locations in New York and Florida, will pay $15.5 million to settle charges that its centers falsely billed federal and state health-care programs for tests either not performed or not necessary, and for paying kickbacks to physicians.

A radiologist’s social-media indiscretions may have cost him his candidacy for the U.S. Senate and could land him in hot water with his state’s medical board. 

Caving to provider concern, CMS announced yesterday that it would implement end-to-end ICD-10 testing this summer for “a small sample group” of providers.

In a comment letter on the final 2014 Medicare fee schedule for physicians, the ACR pointed out once more the cumulative effect on imaging reimbursement of various recent legislative and policy changes and urged CMS to adopt a “dampening” policy to limit the total amount a specific procedural code could be reduced in a given year.

The Garden State becomes the 14th state that requires mammography providers to include breast density status in reports sent to patients.

On September 9, 2013, Cheryl Proval, editor, Radiology Business Journal, moderated “The Boston Experience: Radiology’s Value Proposition in the New Health-care Paradigm,” a panel discussion held in Boston, Massachusetts, at the RBMA Fall Educational Conference.  The meeting location offered a unique opportunity to explore radiology’s changing value proposition under health-care reform with a panel that represents hospital-based radiology, outpatient radiology, and the payor community.

Efficiency can be thought of as the volume of work done over a period of time. In diagnostic radiology, that has been interpreted to mean RVUs per radiologist per unit of time. With decreasing per-case reimbursement, we have seen particularly strong pressures to increase efficiency. Unfortunately, some practices have done so at the expense of other important functions.