Erwin Cruz, MD, a Dallas County neurologist, has been awarded a $10.66 million verdict after jurors determined he had been defrauded by business partners from two North Texas diagnostic medical imaging centers.

Several specific healthcare costs for the privately insured in 2010 increased by almost three times the rate of general inflation, according to a report from the Health Care Cost Institute (HCCI). The per capita spending on inpatient and outpatient facilities, professional procedures and prescription drugs rose 3.3 percent in 2010 for beneficiaries under age 65 with private, employer-sponsored group insurance.

Four major radiology and radiologic science organizations joined together to show their support for the Consistency, Accuracy, Responsibility and Excellence (CARE) in Medical Imaging and Radiation Therapy bill during a Capitol Hill briefing, hosted by the American Society of Radiologic Technologists (ASRT), on May 17.

Estimating the cost of failure as a potential $4 billion to $12 billion drag on U.S. healthcare, the Joint Commission is asking the clinical engineering community to be its wingman as the JC seeks to persuade the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to relax its controversial December 2011 directive on medical equipment maintenance.

Banner Health Network, an Arizona patient care and business partnership between Arizona Integrated Physicians, the Banner Medical Group, the Banner Physician Hospital Organization and Banner Health, is contracting Aetna for technology support for population health management and patient services.

Baptist Health South Florida in Miami has selected Philips Healthcare to deliver radiology and cardiovascular information management and enterprise imaging systems.

When patients are asked how they prefer to receive radiology resultseither from their referring physician or directly from the radiologistthey seem to want things both ways. A recent survey has shown that about three quarters of patients prefer to hear results through the traditional model, from the referring physician, but a nearly equal proportion expect their results to come from the experts at image interpretation, according to a study published in the June issue of Academic Radiology.

Advocate Health Care, the largest health system in Illinois, has selected Chicago-based Merge Healthcare to provide a suite of cardiology image and data sharing systems.