The American College of Radiology has updated its guidelines on imaging appropriateness for hundreds of diagnostic, interventional and radiation-oncology scenarios. This latest edition of ACR Appropriateness Criteria covers several topics new to the digital publication, including suspected thoracic aortic aneurysm, tinnitus and radiologic management of central venous access.

Structured reporting in radiology has its detractors, but few would argue against the proposition that the days are numbered for traditional free-text narrative reports. The latter vary too much in language, length and style to consistently aid referring physicians making care decisions—a potentially serious demerit in the “prove your value” care era—while structured reporting offers a way to improve on not only consistency and actionability but also profession-wide quality.

Health Imaging caught up with Christie James, MS, president-elect of the Radiology Business Management Association, at last Friday’s annual meeting of RBMA’s New England Chapter in Somerville, Mass. James, whose fulltime job is operations manager of radiology revenue cycle management for the Massachusetts General Physicians Organization, begins her 2018–19 tenure next April.

In emergency radiology, the price radiologists pay for taking every phone call that comes in during a read—and then taking the time to hear out each caller—is racking up slower report turnaround times. No surprise there, but a new study shows the total duration of such phone calls within an hour to be the single most telling turnaround-time predictor among all tasks that take ED rads away from their overnight reads.

Among the concerns with which U.S. healthcare is presently reckoning, the phenomenon of physician burnout may or may not be one of the more overblown. Either way, recent survey research has shown growing numbers of doctors feel they’re essentially working in a chronic state of stress-induced exhaustion. Radiologists are no exception. What are the causes of and cures for burnout within medical imaging?

A Sept. 9 article published in the Journal of the American College of Radiology examined cobranding strategies for academic radiology practices considering partnership-based network expansion.

Radiologists who spend more than seven hours each day in front of a PACS workstation suffer more work-affecting musculoskeletal pain than their less sedentary colleagues, and the particular symptoms vary between men and women as well as between older and younger groupings.

A recent paper by a team of researchers led by Jay, R. Parikh, MD, with the University of Texas Anderson Cancer Center in Houston explores bullying in radiology. Published in the August issue of the Journal of the American College of Radiology, it also includes a seven-step strategy of combatting such behavior.