The imaging industry is continually evolving and it’s important to stay informed about the changes that may impact the development, operation, maintenance, and growth of your imaging services.
Medicare to Shift 50 Percent of Payments to Alternative Models by 2019
Half of Medicare’s provider payments will come through alternative payment models within four years, according to goals the Obama administration announced Jan. 26. The initiative would expand the roughly 20 percent of Medicare payments that were made through alternative payment models and population-based payments in 2014 to 30 percent by the end of 2016 and 50 percent by the end of 2018. Continue Reading…
When Hospitals Buy Doctors’ Offices, and Patient Fees Soar
Imagine you’re a Medicare patient, and you go to your doctor for an ultrasound of your heart one month. Medicare pays your doctor’s office $189, and you pay about 20 percent of that bill as a co-payment.Then, the next month, your doctor’s practice has been bought by the local hospital. You go to the same building and get the same test from the same doctor, but suddenly the price has shot up to $453, as has your share of the bill. Continue Reading…
Economic Changes Affecting Your Bottom Line
March 23, 2015, marks the fifth anniversary of passage of the Affordable Care Act into law. As the health care marketplace continues its transition into a new normal of payment methods, key economic terms such as “risk” have now become paramount concepts for providers to not only understand, but embrace and incorporate into their business and clinical strategies. Continue Reading…
Cardiac PET/MR: Big Footprint—Small Step?
Modern imaging seems unthinkable without the tremendous developments of the last few decades. While the future of Radiology seems to be in molecular imaging based on novel tracers, the present is unimaginable without the past technical evolution. As the footprints got bigger with the devices growing from simple gamma cameras to SPECT, PET, and finally hybrid scanners, the steps in medical imaging achieved by these advancements were of variable size. Continue Reading…
FDA makes official its hands-off approach to regulating health apps and medical software
The Food and Drug Administration issued its final guidance on the regulation of health apps and other software, and health tech developers should be breathing a sigh of relief. The FDA confirmed that it’ll take a hands-off approach to most medical device data systems (MDDS), or software that conveys data to and from a medical device (like a glucose meter, for example). Continue Reading…
