Quality

The focus of quality improvement in healthcare is to bolster performance and processes related to diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. Leaders in this space also ensure the proper selection of imaging exams and procedures, and monitor the safety of services, among other duties. Reimbursement programs such as the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) utilize financial incentives to improve quality. This also includes setting and maintaining care quality initiatives, such as the requirements set by the Joint Commission.

value quality value-based care

Effort to stop primary care providers from ordering low-value imaging hits brick wall

Researchers with the University of California, Davis, detailed their randomized clinical trial in JAMA Network Open Wednesday. 

physician tracking patient data and reporting on outcomes

American College of Radiology updates imaging appropriateness criteria with 8 new topics

ACR is adding new entries covering scenarios such as brain tumors, inflammatory ear disease, and lung cancer staging after therapy. 

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What pizza delivery and university radiologists’ new approach to mammography have in common

Consumers can track their pie when it enters the oven, is boxed and departs for delivery. Why can't they do the same with cancer screening results? 

breast cancer mammography screening mammogram scheduling

OB-GYN specialists urge more aggressive breast cancer screening amid rising case counts

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists wants women to begin regular mammography in their 40s as diagnoses climb among this age group. 

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How a Federally Qualified Health Center quashed common barriers to lung cancer screening

Experts created new lung cancer screening pathways within CommUnityCare Health Centers—a large, diverse FQHC system in Central Texas.

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How 1 hospital cut its CT scheduling interval from 6 weeks to 3 days, adding $1.6M in revenue

The University of Rochester Medical Center operates two major imaging sites that handle most outpatient CT requests, completing an average of nearly 3,300 exams each month. 
 

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Which interventional radiology procedure is most cost-effective for treating knee osteoarthritis?

OA impacts more than 595M people worldwide and produces $80B in healthcare costs in the U.S. alone, experts detailed in the American Journal of Roentgenology.  

CDC highlights radiology’s critical role in striving for ‘hospital diagnostic excellence’

DxEx, as the agency calls it for short, ensures that imaging and other tests are ordered, interpreted, communicated and acted upon appropriately. 

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.