With our June 1 newsletter, healthimaging.com debuts its Best Of newsletter. Each week our editorial team will review the week’s stories and compile the top five or six for our readers to revisit.

We also will include any pressing stories, such as a the study released in the Journal of American College of Radiology demonstrating that most patients in the U.S. who undergo CT of the abdomen and pelvis in the emergency department are clinically complex. Will the findings quiet the overutilization drumbeat? It’s possible, but the reality is that CT ordering and utilization, in addition to patients, are complex measures.

Meanwhile, the specter of overdiagnosis reared once again in the June issue of American Journal of Roentgenology. This time, researchers considered how the advent of CT angiography for the evaluation of pulmonary embolism may be tied to an increased incidence. It’s an important question for radiology stakeholders to consider.

On the business and informatics front, researchers determined that radiologists are prone to underdocumentation of abdominal ultrasound exams and detailed their findings in the June issue of Journal of American College of Radiology. Underdocumentation is linked with undercoding, which, in turn, is tied to underpayment. One strategy to correct the equation, according to researchers, is to utilize structured reporting.

As always, please share with us how healthimaging.com can best meet your needs. Send an email, say hello at the annual meeting of the Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine (SIIM) and complete our 2012 reader survey.

Lisa Fratt, editor
lfratt@trimedmedia.com