ACOs: A Concept in Motion

October 28, 2011 | Feature

While health-policy experts debate the potential of accountable-care organizations (ACOs) to address the problem of cost in US health care, a panel held on July 22, 2011, at the RBMA Executive Education Program in Scottsdale, Arizona, reveals that with prototype ACOs already in play and health-care systems assessing their ACO needs,... Read More »

ACOs and Radiology Technology: A Conversation With Bibb Allen Jr, MD

July 16, 2011 | Legislative Report

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act calls for early adopters to launch accountable-care organization (ACO) demonstration projects and shared-savings programs in 2012. The development of these value-added services and the general trend toward formation of ACOs will undoubtedly lead to changes not only in the acquisition of imaging technology... Read More »

Quo Vadis/ Whither Goest Thou?

February 16, 2011 | Priors

It is no easy task to hit a moving target, so the seven speakers who presented the refresher course, “How Payment Policy Will Impact Technology Development in the 21st Century,” on November 30, 2010, at the annual meeting of the RSNA in Chicago, Illinois, diligently colored in the background of the... Read More »

Health Reform’s Impact on Imaging

July 14, 2010 | Revenue Track

Plenty remains unknowable about the incipient impact of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA), but the act does stand to affect imaging providers, specifically through its compliance,... Read More »

A Health-reform Primer for Providers

July 07, 2010 | Feature

A buoyant tour of health-care reform greeted radiologists who gathered at the annual American Roentgen Ray Society meeting for the Caldwell Lecture, delivered by Benjamin K. Chu, MD, on May 3, 2010, in San Diego, California. If Chu seemed unusually upbeat, for a physician, about health-care reform, it might have been... Read More »

Finger in the Wind

July 04, 2010 | Adview

Physicians are in a real bind as fee-for-service reimbursement falls under attack and alternative payment methods (such as bundling and capitation) gain traction in Washington, DC. As of June 18, Medicare Part B claims were being processed with the 21.3% cut mandated by the sustainable growth rate’s formula, and House... Read More »

When the Invisible Hand Meets an Immovable Object

April 28, 2010 | Adview

In a coincidence worth noting, Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations was published in 1776, the year that our nation-to-be declared its independence from what was then the Kingdom of Great Britain. In that work, Smith argued that the colonies were not worth the cost of keeping them. Nonetheless,... Read More »

Comparative-effectiveness Research and Imaging: Insights and Ambitions

April 12, 2010 | Legislative Report

In addition to extending coverage to an estimated 31 million US residents, the recently passed HR 3590, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, has ensured a future for comparative-effectiveness research (CER) by legislating funding, at $500 million per year, for the indefinite future. The stimulus bill launched the CER initiative with... Read More »

Implications of Reform for Hospitals: Seismic or Subtle?

February 24, 2010 | Strategic Planning

Hospitals are keeping a wary eye on Washington, and on several key payor trends with major implications for imaging service lines, for good reason.

In a December 2, 2009, presentation to representatives of member hospitals in Chicago, Illinois, Shay Pratt, managing director of the Advisory Board, explained that radiology’... Read More »

Preparing for Potential Reform: The Hospital View

January 18, 2010 | Imaging Futures

Some proponents of national health care reform expect to pop the champagne corks any day now in celebration of getting a bill through Congress. Meanwhile, some administrators of hospitals and imaging departments expect to pop the lids off aspirin bottles so that they can begin nursing the headaches caused... Read More »

Too Big to Understand

December 21, 2009 | The Big Picture

I just finished reading the new book about last year’s financial near meltdown, Too Big to Fail (Viking, 2009), by Andrew Ross Sorkin. The book’s several hundred pages of behind-the-scenes narrative leading up to and immediately following the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 were instructive on several... Read More »

Window on 2010: Impact of Imaging-Specific Health Care Reforms

December 21, 2009 | Legislative Report

Since the dawn of the DRA at the close of 2005, health care observers have predicted a follow-on DRA II. It appears that this prediction will come to pass shortly after the clock strikes midnight on December 31.

In a carefully considered presentation at the Gleacher Center... Read More »

Health Care Efficiency: No Miracle Cure

October 14, 2009 | Think Tank

Health care reform ideas are everywhere these days. As a radiologist, I’m all for controlling costs—but I challenge the assumption that national electronic medical records (EMRs) will magically make providers more informed and automatically decrease unnecessary tests.

It sounds great, but the idea and, at... Read More »

Too Much Health Care?

September 11, 2009 | The Big Picture

Of all the issues facing today’s imaging executives and radiologists, none sounds more cacophonous than the nearly universal cry that the United States spends too much on its health care. We do, indeed, allocate quite a bit more to health care, at 16% or so of the gross domestic... Read More »

Radiology Braces for Change Ahead

September 10, 2009 | Feature

Some US employees still enjoy Cadillac-style health plans in which little is paid out of pocket and coverage includes almost every health need, but health care costs for its workers helped send Cadillac maker General Motors into bankruptcy. Moreover, for every worker or family with a Cadillac plan, there’... Read More »

Adding Patient Value to Health Care

September 09, 2009 | Health Care Reform

Harvard professor, best-selling business author, and management consultant specializing in competitive advantage Michael E. Porter, PhD, offers his free-market spin on health care reform¹ in the July 8, 2009, issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. He begins by rightly noting that decades of debate and fragmentary reform have... Read More »

Against the Sword of Damocles

September 09, 2009 | The Bottom Line

As you read this, health care reform (at least the idea that a single, transformative bill will markedly and permanently reduce the problem of the uninsured in this country) is still an active prospect, and one to which the president and, quite independently, leaders in Congress have committed enormous... Read More »

The Demise of Reason (and Eating Crow)

September 09, 2009 | Adview

During August, the health care debate moved from the marble edifices of Washington, DC, to the highways and byways of US life. To this point, many thoughtful people have been engaged in this discussion, and interesting ideas are being proposed from all sectors of public life. This wider public... Read More »

Health Care Reform and Medical Imaging: The 10,000-foot View

August 18, 2009 | Legislative Report

The Obama administration is pursuing an aggressive timetable to deliver on a campaign promise to make affordable health care available to all US residents. Though the task is daunting, the original timetable of late autumn is still achievable.

In a letter to Congress dated June 2, 2009, President Obama... Read More »

Radiology and the Culture of Money

July 01, 2009 | Final Read

Let’s get the full disclosure part out of the way right up front. I am a capitalist: an Adam Smith, free-market, supply-side, trickle-down-economics entrepreneur who believes that individuals have a right to build wealth for themselves without anyone being able to play Robin Hood with their money,... Read More »

Health Care Tomorrow: A Revisionist Preview

June 12, 2009 | Imaging Futures

Jeff Goldsmith predicts that, despite inevitable changes, the future of health care is more sound than many people believe. Goldsmith, president, Health Futures, Inc, Charlottesville, Va, and associate professor of public health sciences at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, presented A Look Over the Horizon at Beyond™, the Third... Read More »

Health Reform’s Shortest Era

February 15, 2009 | The Big Picture

He came. He saw. He vanished. Just as we health care journalist types were lining up the margins and checking references on our various predictions of what Tom Daschle would bring to the health reform debate and process, he bequeathed his White House office to his deputy in waiting.... Read More »

Health Care Delivery, Undisrupted

December 01, 2008 | Leadership

How to afford health care is not the question we should be asking in these times of unsustainable health care cost increases. The right question to ask is this: How do we make health care more affordable? That is the question tackled by Hwang and Christensen¹ in a recent... Read More »