A disturbing trend is clearly visible in the marketplace: too many new imaging facilities are out-of-date by the time they are initially operational. Two key factors can make the best intentions go awry. First, despite the proliferation of PACS, very few health care facility planners have experience with building a new filmless facility once, let

Jeff Goldsmith predicts that, despite inevitable changes, the future of health care is more sound than many people believe. Goldsmith, president, Health Futures, Inc, Charlottesville, Va, and associate professor of public health sciences at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, presented A Look Over the Horizon at Beyond™, the Third Annual

The worst advanced visualization system in the world for a pediatric setting is one wherein the only way that referring physicians from across the organization can see 3D reconstructions of diagnostic images is by physically visiting a radiologist at his or her workstation.

“The more you see, the better you are,” Javier Beltran, MD, FACR, says. “You’re exposed to so much pathology that you’ve seen it all, at the end of the day. It brings your expertise to another level.” Beltran is talking about what might be called extreme subspecialization. Beltran is a musculoskeletal radiologist. He estimates that he personally

Hospitals do not cede turf easily to competitors, even within the collegial environment of a multisite system. That, however, is precisely what had to happen before St. Luke’s Hospital and Health Network, Bethlehem, Pa, could centralize breast care among its four hospitals and six outpatient imaging sites in a regional diagnostic breast-imaging

In the 1980s and 1990s, payor fees were generous for the newest modalities, and most freestanding imaging facilities were quite profitable. There was little need for advanced cost accounting. Imaging centers and facilities within physician’s offices proliferated, however. Payors became far more aggressive in discounting what they would pay. When

What’s expected of leaders in radiology has changed, Frank J. Lexa, MD, MBA, informed his audience at the 23rd Annual Economics of Diagnostic Imaging 2008: National Symposium on October 24, 2008, in Arlington, Va. Lexa is clinical professor of radiology at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center, Philadelphia, and adjunct professor of

Do you think that for-profit freestanding outpatient imaging is a phenomenon destined to go the way of Tyrannosaurus rex? Some people do. Some are betting that the resurgence of hospital and health system interest in the outpatient revenue stream will eventually dwarf the freestanding market, rendering it obsolete. I’m wondering whether this is a