Pressing issues, among them the ever-shrinking Medicare Physician Fee Schedule and the threat of further imaging cuts wrought by the debt-ceiling agreement signed on August 2, might be looming larger than accountable-care organizations (ACOs) on radiology providers’ radar screens.

The merger/acquisition market is heating up in radiology. Over the past few months, several mergers of large practices have created even larger ones, and other groups are likely to be considering similar moves. While entering into a merger agreement has its benefits, though, not all potential partners are entirely suited for each other. Moreover,

It has long been said that information is power, and if that is the case, actionable information is even more powerful. For members of independent physician networks, such data are the linchpin in achieving alignment with hospitals, leveraging relationships, attaining preferred status with payors, and more.

Full charge-capture has become a must for today’s radiology practices. In addition to affording the obvious advantages of improved cash flow and lost-income recovery, full charge-capture offers providers access to a more complete—and therefore, more accurate—complement of data for use in negotiating with hospitals and payors, assessing physician

Radiology practices interface with many disparate information systems that produce data, but generating meaningful reports that pull information from all of those systems—PACS, RIS, billing, and reporting—is too cumbersome to be done with any regularity. As payors begin to link reimbursement to outcomes and episodes of care replace individual

Improvement of commercial-payor contracts can result in significant revenue gains and better contracts for medical groups, with radiology practices among them. Successfully negotiating such deals, however—and optimizing them to include financial dividends—necessitates that actionable business intelligence be brought to the bargaining table.

Many radiology-practice leaders will, at one juncture or another, pursue business directions intended to increase partners’ incomes. While nothing is inherently wrong with this approach, following an alternate route that involves investing in technology to position the practice for greater income in the future—and leveraging data to justify and

Today, more than ever, imaging providers must harness the power of actionable business intelligence in all aspects of their operations, including the communication of quantifiable outcomes to payors, client hospitals, referrers, and patients. Such is the strategy to be explored in each issue of RadAnalytics, under the MedAnalytix.com umbrella.