Although CMS could have proposed creating a 50% multiple procedure payment reduction (MPPR) on the professional component of advanced imaging (like in 2011), or elected to expand the MPPR to all forms of imaging, it decided to drop the issue instead

A survey of 742 parents of children with head injuries being treated in Canadian emergency departments found that 52% said they did not know that a CT scan could increase their child’s risk of developing cancer

Advocates for Medicare coverage of PET amyloid-beta imaging to confirm or rule out Alzheimer’s Disease had hoped for broad coverage, but in the end, the draft CMS decision memo only approved the test as part of coverage with evidence development (CED), a narrowly defined type of coverage that will take time to implement

Bridgeport Hospital, a private, not-for-profit acute care hospital, has acquired radiology services provided at three locations of Robert D. Russo, MD and Associates Radiology in Bridgeport and Stratford, Conn., for an undisclosed sum

Some battles are destined to be fought over and over again. The fight to eliminate the IOASE is one such skirmish; it refuses to go away, after more than a decade of debate.

Standardization in radiology can take a dozen different paths, and it is clearly complex—but why is there a need for standardization in the first place? Debra L. Monticciolo, MD, FACR, is vice chair for research at Scott & White Healthcare (Temple, Texas), a nonprofit health system. She is a professor of radiology at the allied Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine and is a subspecialist in mammography. Monticciolo is chair of the ACR® Commission on Quality and Safety. Of course, quality and safety are among the primary reasons that standardization is a talking point for so many who hold stakes in radiology’s future.

A. Mark Fendrick, MD, is a self-described generalist. His research (as a professor of internal medicine and director of the University of Michigan’s Center for Value-based Insurance Design) has probed the cost of the common cold, explored the value of new imaging techniques, and quantified the value of Katie Couric’s colonoscopy in preventing colon cancer in the United States as worth more than $1 billion in National Institutes of Health funding.

Imaging has been through a long legislative and regulatory grind since the first big blow was struck with the DRA, and there is little to indicate that much will change on that front in 2013, according to Ted Burnes, MPA, director of RADPAC, the political-action committee of the ACR®. With Maurine Dennis, MPH, MBA, a consultant for the RBMA, Burnes copresented “Radiology Economics and RADPAC Update” on May 22, 2013, at the RBMA Radiology Summit in Colorado Springs, Colorado.