In its fourth annual update on medical overuse, JAMA Internal Medicine names 10 procedures and practices that are ripe for the curtailing. In the category of “overtesting,” the klieg lights fall on four exams—and all are based in imaging.

In Harris County, Texas, three outpatient family-medicine affiliates of Baylor College of Medicine have slashed their unnecessary orders of lumbar-spine MRIs—and improved the appropriateness ratings of those they did order—by attending educational sessions and using the American College of Radiology’s R-SCAN program.

Anthem’s decision to quit paying for outpatient imaging exams performed in hospitals is getting broad consumer exposure, as NPR has picked up a Sept. 26 Kaiser Health News report on the development.

The disconnect over CT radiation discussions between emergency-room providers and the patients they serve may be wider than expected in the Image Wisely era. At one site, a new survey has shown that more than three-quarters of providers thought they’d routinely discussed radiation doses with CT patients—while fewer than one-quarter of patients said they’d been so informed.

A radiologist who worked at a Veterans Affairs (VA) facility in Illinois and was fired after reporting serious problems among his peers is speaking out.

Should patients be able to receive their radiology reports directly from radiologists? Or should they only be allowed access when chaperoned by a qualified medical professional? Two experts holding opposing views on the matter go toe-to-toe in articles published online in the Journal of the American College of Radiology.

While Australia’s Medicare differs from the federal program of the same name in the U.S., the Land Down Under’s healthcare system is just as politically charged and hotly debated. The latest scuffle is over a Medicare freeze that has ballooned patients’ out-of-pocket expenses, most conspicuously for advanced imaging procedures.

In the heavily fee-for-service payment environment of years past, many care decisions were driven by the ready availability of expensive technologies. Imaging advances stood among the most conspicuous precipitators of resource consumption. That world is fading fast, and for good reason, according to the authors of a paper published online Aug. 17 in the American Journal of Managed Care.