Legislation recently drafted by a bipartisan group of Congressmen aims to reduce doctor payments by reevaluating the current pricing system used by Medicare and most private insurers, according to a report from the Washington Post.

The National Lung Screening Trial showed that low-dose CT screening can catch lung cancer at an early stage, but it can work only if somebody picks up the bill for the CT scan.

The relationship between radiologists and managed care plans is often subject to conflict over issues of payment, but a thorough understanding of contracts and timely, organized responses to problems that do arise can help guarantee correct claim payments, according to an article published in the June issue of the Journal of the American College of Radiology.

Who doesn’t love a bargain? I surely do. Scanning this week’s headlines, I realized there are multiple bargains to be had in the imaging realm. Smart sites have cut repeat CT studies and applied algorithms to triage chest pain patients. Meanwhile, advances in imaging might fuel an uptake in watchful waiting and active surveillance of men with low-risk prostate cancer, which would translate into hefty savings.

Donating money to a worthy cause is certainly admirable, and cancer research is assuredly a worthy cause. But when you send in your check or make a donation over the phone or online, how much of your money is actually going to help cancer patients?

DALLAS—Radiologists may be missing the boat by overlooking the Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS), “an elegantly simple incentive program made complicated by the government,” C. Matthew Hawkins, MD, radiology fellow at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, said during an educational session at the annual meeting of the Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine (SIIM).

DALLAS—Radiation dose monitoring initiatives bring both benefits and flaws, according to Jessica Clements, MS, medical physicist and radiation safety officer at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, during an education session at the Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine (SIIM) annual meeting.

Rationing has become a dirty word in healthcare politics, but a survey of oncologists, patients and members of the general public found a majority supported controlling healthcare costs by denying payment for expensive care if it didn’t improve survival or quality of life, according to results presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago.