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.

FDA posts guidance on managing risk of drug shortages

The Food & Drug Administration has drafted guidelines to help U.S. healthcare better prepare for and respond to events associated with these situations.

9 ways to lift clinician completion of radiologist recommendations

A multidisciplinary panel convened by the ACR has developed a set of quality measures aimed at boosting rates of appropriate follow-up care for patients with noncritical but actionable incidental findings.

Claims review may guide evidence-based approach to contrast-shortage mitigation

Iodinated contrast is most widely used in patients undergoing CT studies for, in descending order, abdominopelvic, chest, head/neck and brain indications.

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10 clues suggest scope, shape of AI’s future in mammography

Computer-aided detection boosted by AI has often proven superior to traditional CAD over the past decade, yet the “new way” has been slow to win broad adoption.

FDA greenlights expansion of CT-guided, robotically supported IR system

The company says the approval for ablations will allow interventional radiologists to perform these operations with nonlinear steering that facilitates high accuracy and average skin-to-target times under nine minutes.

MRI contact-sport study shows ‘no concussion’ doesn’t mean ‘no brain changes’

Football players whose heads are repeatedly struck but suffer no concussions have white-matter abnormalities similar to those sustained by their concussed peers. 

Academic radiology operation takes less than a week to cut contrast consumption in half

Another teaching hospital has quickly and safely reduced its reliance on iodinated contrast media (ICM) by around 50% and taken to the pages of JACR to tell how they did it.

6 categories of contrast CT prove ripe for revisiting during supply shortage

Researchers at a quaternary academic medical center have developed a short-term workaround that they report is now reducing the institution’s consumption of Omnipaque (iohexol) by more than 50% without compromising care quality.

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.