With the feds brandishing more than $20 billion dollars to encourage health IT adoption and usher in a new era of streamlined healthcare, interest in integration stands at an all-time high.  The ability to integrate, share and route data among disparate systems is essential. And the rationale extends beyond dollars. “This isn’t just another way to deliver information. It’s a way to stay connected to the communities where you do business, so patients can get the best possible care,” says Susan Hollabaugh, project manager, clinical information at RadNet, Inc., in Los Angeles.

This year’s Top 25 Connected Facilities are an impressive group that has extended the reach of images from PACS to the EMR, either via links to key images or full image sets. Many extend PACS and EMR access to referring physicians and share data with a health information exchange (HIE) internally and/or externally. They are reaping across-the-board benefits—accelerating and improving patient care with anytime/anywhere access to patient data, virtual subspecialty interpretation and razor-thin report turn-around times that hover near 15 minutes for STAT studies. They are cutting costs, increasing productivity and fueling growth.

Ten years ago, it was nearly impossible to go through the day without seeing an advertisement for whole-body CT screening. Today it’s a different story. The radiation dose exposure from CT scanning has come under intense scrutiny and the value of CT screening must be proved in rigorous trials before many payors, especially Medicare, will consider reimbursing for an exam.

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is not a new concept, but the medical field has been slow to adopt it. This could change as more and more radiologists, administrators and IT leaders recognize its value in a field that is requiring a greater degree of interoperability.

The push to develop EMRs across healthcare enterprises really lies at the heart of  the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH Act, part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009), and it is certain that all medical documents—including images and imaging reports—will eventually become part of the electronic health record. But those images are not just limited to diagnostic radiology. They include everything from endoscopy and cardiology images to  dermatology and dentistry. And they also include advanced visualization (AV) images.

Perhaps a little like planning a house renovation or even a second marriage, the second time around can be more complex when it comes to PACS. Implementing a next-generation PACS can bring the same angina, but with calculated planning, the benefits are quite predictable. With concerns ranging from moving data from the old system to the new and avoiding system down time, replacing a PACS needs extensive planning and careful execution—and a team approach to assure success.

Concern about the cancer risk from low medical level radiation, particularly low-dose radiation delivered from CT scans, has been growing in the healthcare community.

Recent requirements from the Joint Commission and the American College of Radiology (ACR) add to the growing number of quality demands being placed upon radiology departments. In an increasingly complex regulatory and financial environment, comprehensive quality management processes are essential. The digital dashboard holds the answers to today’s problems—if you only you dare to fully utilize them.

If the organizers of the 95th Scientific Assembly and Annual Meeting of the Radiological Society of North America even considered the idea of putting together a conference that could skim along quietly underneath the radar, those thoughts ended Nov. 17 when the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force released its controversial revised mammography guidelines.

By any measure, 2009 has been a rough year for medical imaging. The U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation that could change Medicare payments for advanced diagnostic imaging procedures, such as MRI, CT, PET and nuclear medicine, through an increase in the equipment utilization rate assumption from 50 percent to 75 percent.

It has been a rough year for medical imaging services in the United States. After nearly a decade of double-digit growth, the combination of reimbursement cutbacks mandated by the Deficit Reduction Act (DRA) of 2005 and an economy in the early stages of recession  recovery leaves radiology facing some serious challenges. But stay tuned...

The advantages of 1.5T MRI over other modalities for staging cancer are twofold: No radiation and decreased nephrotoxicity. In particular, radiologists focused on oncology say the modality is particularly useful for imaging brain tumors, noting that it is valuable for problem solving and treatment planning because of its superior capability to provide soft-tissue contrast.

As an industry that long ago learned to survive and thrive through reimbursement cuts, even the likes of the DRA, health imaging and IT is not recession-proof, but for sure is recovery ready.

Being connected in 2009 is a 24/7/365 proposition. While good connections in business relations can bring profits—effective IT-enabled connections across a multi-site healthcare organization allow significant reductions and efficiencies in operating and staff costs and better care for patients via expanded regional reach for many facilities. Faster clinical decision-making comes from quickly communicated results, more complete imaging history facilitates better decision-making, and improved physician satisfaction via tailored, comprehensive reports delivered swiftly in the means the physician prefers to review them ensures that referrals continue.

Coming soon to a display near you: Anytime, anywhere advanced visualization DICOM image set reconstructions. The advent of server-side processing technology permits image manipulations to take place on a central server before being transmitted to a monitor—either a diagnostic workstation, a laptop, a smart phone, or an operating theater display. This structure allows virtually latency-free viewing of images at any location, and in the process, is expanding the role of radiology throughout healthcare.

This year, one trend dominates the health imaging market and the entire economy. The lingering and deepening recession stands at the top of the list of items that keep CIOs, hospital and clinical department administrators, and radiologists awake at night. There is at least a spark of hope in the $787 billion U.S. economic stimulus package. So what’s in it for imaging, radiology, cardiology and IT? Health Imaging & IT untangles the package, interpreting its implications for the health imaging world.

Clinical studies are demonstrating the utility of cardiac CT as an essential imaging modality—with studies showing the non-invasive study yields results comparable to invasive coronary angiograms. Other supporting data are beginning to emerge, too, hinting that cardiac CT saves time and money throughout the health system. On the downside, reimbursement remains a local decision, and in most places, current rates don’t leave much room for profit.

For cardiology PACS, the explosion of cardiac-related advances across imaging modalities has created demand for expanded capabilities beyond simple image storage and distribution, providing physicians with access to patient-specific information related to images and reports within the facility or externally. Meanwhile, with this increased volume of image data, cardiologists also need to have access to more extensive patient data, such as hemodynamic monitoring, EKG and electronic medical record (EMR) information to create structured reports.

Since the FDA placed a black-box warning on echocardiography contrast agents in October 2007, the market for the agents dropped tremendously. But there is good news for the echo contrast agent market and patients as the pendulum is swinging back again. The subsequent movement to educate both regulators and providers has led to a modification of the agency’s contraindications and may have generated a resurgence in their use—along with a better understanding of their clinical value.

Consolidated healthcare IT infrastructure promises to help fix the system—providing clinicians streamlined access to multiple datasets to make timely, informed clinical decisions and removing artificial barriers between departments, physicians and hospitals.