The American College of Radiology announced Monday that overall fees for accreditation will rise by about 9% across all modalities except for mammography and radiation oncology.
Meanwhile, ACR is folding breast magnetic resonance imaging into its larger MR accreditation program, a move the college said will lower costs for providers.
“To improve American College of Radiology Accreditation value and customer experience, the college continues to modernize ACR Accreditation systems to strengthen security, usability and efficiency,” the organization said in a March 27 announcement. “To enable these improvements, pricing will be updated July 1. For most modalities, this will be the first fee change in a decade.”
Beginning three months from Saturday, the cost of accreditation for the first CT unit (up to three modules) will jump from $2,900 to $3,200, for instance, a 10.3% change. ACR said it will continue to offer a 10% discount when a single practice-site location applies for the accreditation of three or more modalities, except for mammography. Multi-site, multi-unit price discounts also are available to larger practices, the college said on its webpage.
The American College of Radiology is pursuing its own accreditation from the Health Information Trust Alliance, given constantly evolving cybersecurity concerns. This will help ACR to strengthen its sign-in process and implement other more “rigorous” controls to protect providers’ personal information, according to the announcement.
ACR previously announced updates to its accreditation program in December.
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.