2011 January

January is the season of promise and fresh starts. Were ready to improve performance, take the next steps toward achieving our goals or, at the very minimum, break bad habits.

Old habits whether good or baddie hard. Studies are mounting, showing that as radiologists diagnose patients injuries, many are incurring their own, with poor workstation design, harmful repetitive motions and prolonged postures as key culprits.

The pre-show buzz for the 96th annual scientific meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) amounted to a near crescendo. And the worlds largest medical meeting certainly didnt disappoint; RSNA 2010 will be remembered for a long list of highlights.

Fifteen years ago, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) included a provision for a Unique National Identifier to streamline sharing of patient records across enterprises. Although experts described the identifier as a critical building block of electric health records and essential to achieving quality and safety goals, the privacy lobby persuaded Congress to repeal the provision one year later. Today, as the U.S. pushes toward a National Health Information Network (NHIN) and universal EHRs, lawmakers are eerily quiet on the issue.

Radiology practices across the U.S. face mounting pressure to improve quality and performance. However, tackling such intangibles presents a bit of a mystery. Key performance indicators (KPIs) provide a means to measure quality and offer a methodical recipe for quantifying and improving performance.