Growth in imaging utilization has led prior authorization (a 1980s health-plan strategy) to be applied to advanced imaging services. RBMs have developed increasingly complex programs to reduce imaging expenses through utilization management, credentialing, channeling to lower-cost providers, and network contracting.

By observing the quantity and quality of informatics innovation emerging from a radiology department, it is possible to identify those institutions that are nurturing the next wave of informaticists in radiology. One beacon is the University of Pennsylvania Health System (UPHS) in Philadelphia, where R. Nick Bryan, MD, PhD, is chair of radiology.

Buy a banana, and it will cost you less than a dollar per pound—unless you’re in a hotel, where it might cost you twice the grocery-store price. The prices of many items readily obtainable by the consumer usually fall within a well-defined range, according to supply and demand. This is not so in health care (in general) and in medical imaging

After government officials revised the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act to include hospital-based physicians practicing in outpatient settings, radiology practices began scrambling to determine what it will mean to them. IT adjustments take time and money, and practices waiting for stage 2 meaningful-use

Imaging is increasingly pervasive in modern medicine; according to a 2011 study¹ published in Radiology, the use of CT scans in emergency-department visits has risen 16% per year since 1995, and the report estimated that the modality could have been used in 20% of emergency-department visits in 2011. Remarkably little research has been performed to

Attestation for stage 1 meaningful use is underway in radiology, and expectations are rising about the ability of IT to reduce cost and increase quality in health care. In separate interviews with Radiology Business Journal, Farzad Mostashari, MD, ScM, national coordinator for health IT, and Todd Park, CTO for the US DHHS, clarify their

Imagine that your practice has been barreling down the health-care highway for years. Now, though, there’s a T intersection straight ahead, with one route leading to completely commoditized health care and the other (the road far less traveled) leading to high-touch, high-quality care—to an experience monopoly. This is a monopoly in terms of the

The upside to Berwick being shown the door in Washington is the pleasure to be had in reading his first major talk¹ since leaving the office of CMS administrator on December 2, 2011. The occasion was the 23rd Annual National Forum on Quality Improvement in Health Care of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, held in Orlando, Florida. Berwick