Radiology providers are planning to acquire more equipment this year, with the volume of such purchases expected to be up by 10% in 2011 compared to 2010, according to a new market perception study conducted by KLAS, Orem, Utah. Entitled “Diagnostic Imaging Purchases 2010: Spending Increases, Loyalty is Tested”, the study evaluates more than $200

Reimbursement reductions—most recently, the 2011 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule cuts—have had a significant impact on the radiology arena, with many practices and imaging-center companies taking sizeable hits to their bottom lines or being forced to close their doors. Some entities, however, refuse merely to accept the negative impact of

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.

Dow Jones & Co filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida earlier this week in an effort to overturn a 1979 court order barring access to Medicare claims data.

Clarifying earlier communications, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has issued a transmittal updating the physician supervision regulation as mandated in the Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment System (HOPPS) 2011 Final Rule.

Since the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act went into effect in February 2010, regulations regarding health-care data security have become more stringent than ever before. For instance, the DHHS secretary is required to publish the names of covered entities that have experienced any data breach involving

There are two major ways that a physician ends up in court, sued for malpractice: first, by providing care in a negligent manner; second, by failing to inform the patient properly. While radiologists are not exempt from the former problem, they have largely been shielded from the latter because the job of communicating findings has, by professional