Ron Boucher, MD, chief of radiology at the VA Medical Center in Portland, Ore., and clinical professor of Oregon Health & Science University, spent nine months practicing radiology in a battlefield tent hospital only a mile from the front in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

Private insurers will soon have no choice but to cover low-dose CT screenings for high-risk patients, but a fight is brewing over whether Medicare should follow suit.

Medicare’s temporary freeze on payments for certain PET scans of solid tumors, which began Oct. 6 and won’t end until Nov. 11, came as no surprise. The agency announced last spring that it needed time to test and edit this part of its claims-processing system. 

Now that we're reaching the one year mark of the official launch of the health insurance exchange, critics and supporters continue to debate whether or not healthcare reform is reforming anything. According to an article in Forbes today, something much bigger is happening. Whatever you think of its merits, the Affordable Care Act is re-shaping American healthcare, radically altering business models that hadn’t changed in decades.  

A new analysis shows radiologists carved out of lower-cost Obamacare insurance plans to a notably greater degree than cardiologists and neurologists. 

After 20 months of buildup, the federal government’s new Open Payments website finally launched last week—and landed with a thud. Massive and fragmented to the point of being, as one observer put it, “so complicated that it’s almost useless,” the system seems unready for prime time. 

Another key member of the Office of the National Coordinator of Health IT (ONC) has resigned. Judy Murphy, chief nursing officer (CNO) and director of the Office of Clinical Quality and Safety (OCQS), is leaving ONC and will join IBM Healthcare Global Business Services in the role of chief nursing officer. Her last day will be Oct. 17.

MILWAUKEE, Wis., Oct. 1, 2014 — Integrated Medical Partners (IMP), a full-service provider of profit-improvement solutions for medical practices announced today the addition of Mr. Keith E. Chew, MHA, CMPE as Managing Director, Strategic Positioning and Consulting Services. Mr. Chew will also have the same title with Integrated Radiology Partners (IRP), the IMP solution for Radiology Practices.