Of all the problems besetting the health status of the U.S. population, the raging opioid epidemic might be the most maddening. In many ways, it’s a self-inflicted wound. 

The American Society of Radiation Technologists (ASRT) has elected three new board members to serve on the 2017-2018 ASRT Board of Directors. The newly elected appointees will begin their one-year terms following the 2017 ASRT Governance and House of Delegates Meeting, held June 23-25 in Orlando.

Spreemo Health announced the launch of its new Spine Radiology Network to improve outcomes and reduce diagnostic errors for patients with chronic back pain.

Imaging utilization in the U.S. varies more at the county level than at the state level, according to a study published in the Journal of the American College of Radiology. In addition, researchers found poor ratings in economic measures, such as income and insurance coverage, independently correlated with higher imaging utilization—the opposite of what they expected.

Researchers may have discovered an effective method of predicting heart attack and other serious cardiovascular events with a combination of CT angiography and CT myocardial stress perfusion imaging.

The IT team at Western Reserve Hospital, a 105-bed, physician-owned institution in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, already had considerable experience with remotely hosted solutions. In 2015, the time came to consider a remote option for its new PACS. 

While helping to steer 105-bed Western Reserve Hospital in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, toward a remotely hosted PACS solution, Jeffrey Unger, MD, repeatedly voiced one crucial concern: Would he and his fellow radiologists have to wait at their workstations, precious seconds ticking away, while PACS servers sitting hundreds of miles away processed massive datasets?

The advent of value-based reimbursement has tightened the purse strings on the clinical services income that academic medical centers traditionally rely on. It will become increasingly important for academic hospitals to develop a 21st century funds flow model, and radiology departments need to know where they fit into the institutional mission—both now and in the future.