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Thursday, March 04 2010
One of the arguments that President Obama has made in favor of healthcare reform is that the same kind of insurance system available to him and members of Congress should be available to all Americans.
Thursday, February 04 2010
Did the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) make a mistake last year when it decided it would not reimburse for CT colonography (CTC)?
Tuesday, December 22 2009
The use of hybrid imaging systems will clearly improve the accuracy of molecular imaging approaches—however, the imaging community will need to overcome several hurdles in translating the evolving targeted imaging probes, technologies and applications into clinical care.
Thursday, December 10 2009
While radiologists are ready and willing to take advantage of the benefits provided by advances in medical technology, without adequate training and an understanding of what that technology can do, it loses much of its utility.
Monday, November 09 2009
Written by Mary C. Tierney, Editorial Director
The waiting is the hardest part—so went the lyrics of the well-known Tom Petty song. But it’s the song patients are singing when it comes to waiting for imaging test results. They are fed up—they want results more quickly plus written in a way that’s detailed and easy to understand. So says a recent study examining patient-centered care published this month in the Journal of the American College of Radiology. I’m sure we can all relate.
Thursday, October 22 2009
A properly configured RIS can accomplish much more than automating minor clerical tasks or replacing paper forms with electronic data input and storage. A disciplined deployment can uncork practice bottlenecks and increase practice revenue, according to results of a study published in this month’s issue of the Journal of the American College of Radiology. A pair of researchers from the William E. Simon Graduate School of Business Administration at the University of Rochester in Rochester, N.Y., found that a RIS can provide significant business value only if it is leveraged to implement effective workflow process innovation.
Thursday, October 08 2009
The capabilities of advanced visualization imaging technology seemingly grow on a monthly basis. Not only can these applications bring new service lines onboard a practice, they also can help to lower patient radiation dose. A team from the departments of radiology and vascular surgery at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, have used post-acquisition CT data processing to enable the use of nonenhanced CT for the detection of endoleak in the repair of endovascular abdominal aortic aneurysms.
Thursday, September 17 2009
Back in February this year, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) allocated roughly $19.2 billion for investment in EHR technology in the U.S. These funding provisions, contained in the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act,allow for providers and hospitals to be awarded funds for EHR implementation when demonstrating “meaningful use” of the technology.
The goal, set by the Obama Administration at that time, is to have nationwide use of EHRS by 2014.
Thursday, September 03 2009
One of the compelling arguments for the utilization of advanced visualization imaging technology is that it can extend the capabilities of currently deployed modalities, offering practices the opportunity of expanding service lines. A team of researchers at Stanford University in Stanford, Calif., have used post-acquisition CT data processing to enable the 3D visualization of the periampullary region of the ampulla of Vater. Noninvasive evaluation of this structure using CT, conventional MRI and transabdominal sonography is often limited.
Thursday, August 20 2009
The big news today in the integration and interoperability IT tools market is the billion dollar allocation of Health IT for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) funding for EHR deployment. In an interesting move, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and David Blumenthal, MD, the head of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC), funded an initial round of grants aimed at EHR infrastructure and training. Just about $600 million will be made available to provide hospitals and clinicians with hands-on technical assistance in the selection, acquisition, implementation and meaningful use of certified EHR systems. Another $564 million will be made available to develop information sharing among these systems.
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Thursday, February 11 2010
One of the more interesting studies that came out of the 2009 annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) was one that found that radiologists should be able to accurately diagnose acute appendicitis from a remote location with the use of a handheld or mobile phone (in this case an iPhone) equipped with OsiriX mobile software.
Thursday, January 07 2010
The news that a man tried to destroy a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day by igniting chemicals hidden in his underwear has officials across the globe rethinking the issue of airline security. One of the major considerations under discussion for improvements is the use of full body scanners.
Friday, December 18 2009
The issue of medical imaging and radiation exposure continues to dominate headlines, as Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles (as well as other hospitals in California and Alabama) are dealing with the problem that hundreds of their patients received excessive amounts of radiation while undergoing CT brain perfusion scans. And this week the Archives of Internal Medicine published a pair of studies suggesting that CT scans may pose more of a cancer risk for patients than was originally thought.
Monday, November 09 2009
 It is apparently more politically expedient to hamstring an entire branch of medicine than it is to close a single legislative loophole. The issue, of course, is the explosion in growth of diagnostic imaging services over the past 15 years.
Thursday, October 29 2009
The pace of research in functional imaging moves at a fast clip, with breakthroughs at the laboratory bench promising new treatments in the clinical setting. Getting from point A to point B, however, is rarely a seamless transition. Take the biomarker 11C-choline, for example. The compound has successfully been applied for PET imaging of prostate cancer, bladder cancer and other solid malignancies. Although the radiotracer has shown strength for cancer detection, its observed sensitivity has shown great variance.
Thursday, October 15 2009
An ongoing series of unfortunate events broke down existing radiation dose safety protocols in the CT perfusion unit at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Although the investigation into the cause of the cascade of failure is ongoing, some data has emerged. Over an 18-month period, 206 CT brain perfusion patients at the facility received radiation doses that were approximately eight times higher than the expected level. Hospital officials said there was a misunderstanding about an embedded default setting applied by the CT system that resulted in a higher than expected amount of radiation. Could IT have alerted personnel to the problem sooner? Without a thorough analysis of the entire system at the facility, the answer is a firm “maybe.” However, PACS professionals may want to seriously consider implementing the capabilities of the DICOM Dose Structured Report (SR) object in their practice to help mitigate events such as these.
Thursday, September 24 2009
The World Molecular Imaging Congress opened this week in Montreal with a slew of scientific sessions that promised to scintillate all but the most jaded of clinical and investigative research palettes. Representatives from Academy of Molecular Imaging, the Society for Molecular Imaging, the European Society for Molecular Imaging and the Federation of Asian Societies for Molecular Imaging worked together to develop a scientific program that integrates developments in imaging technologies and molecular imaging agents with applications for drug development, basic science investigations and clinical translation. In a press conference yesterday afternoon, keynote speaker Roger Y. Tsien, PhD, spoke with journalists about his current research on enzymatically amplified targeting that can deliver both optical and MR contrast agents.
Thursday, September 10 2009
The announcement from the American College of Radiology (ACR) that it has convened a committee to develop a standardized lexicon for CT and MRI surveillance for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) comes as welcome news to structured reporting advocates. The Liver Imaging Reporting and Data System (LI-RADS) is a new method of categorization of liver findings in patients with end-stage liver disease. LI-RADS categories will allow radiologists to stratify lesions according to the level of concern for HCC and suggest strategies for follow up and management.
Thursday, August 27 2009
Alzheimer’s disease affects an estimated 5.3 million people in the U.S. and is the country’s seventh leading cause of death. The reality of caring for a spouse, parent or grandparent afflicted with the disease is overwhelming; entailing far more than handling the forgetfulness and confusion depicted in the lay media. Although there is no cure for Alzheimer’s, treatments for symptoms can improve the quality of life for patients. As with any disease, early detection leads to more effective treatment. PET imaging is seen as one of the promising tools that clinicians can utilize in their battle against Alzheimer’s. A pair of recent studies showcased the capabilities of this molecular imaging modality as part of the diagnostic armamentarium.
Thursday, August 13 2009
There’s a two-pronged reality with which every medical imaging administrator must deal on a daily basis: declining procedure reimbursement coupled with an ever-growing volume of diagnostic imaging procedures. Getting paid less for doing more is not an outcome that most reasonable people would select. However, with the intelligent utilization of health imaging IT systems—such as RIS/PACS—a practice can mitigate reimbursement challenges on the horizon.
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