Dear AuntMinnie Member,
The outbreak of novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) continues to grab headlines as the world struggles to identify and limit the spread of the contagion from its origin in Wuhan, China. Radiology continues to play a key role in identifying individuals who are beginning to show symptoms.
It's perhaps no surprise, then, that our article on recognizing the five key features of coronavirus on CT scans was the top story for the past week. The article offers a look into the types of features indicative of 2019-nCoV infection that were uniformly found on CT scans of 41 patients.
In other news in CT, a new study from IMV Medical Information Division found that U.S. procedure volume in CT hit an all-time peak of 91.4 million scans in 2019, up 3% from the year before. The strong growth in CT use is causing many radiology departments to examine ways to optimize their workload.
Get these stories and more in our CT Community.
Medicare AUC, CDS update
Last month marked the beginning of Medicare's test period for requiring referring physicians to use appropriate use criteria (AUC) based on clinical decision support (CDS) to order advanced imaging tests. Medicare is now ready to accept the modifiers and special codes that are necessary for claims being submitted under AUC/CDS, according to Sandy Coffta of Healthcare Administrative Partners.
Radiology has been in mourning for the last several weeks following the passing of Dr. David C. Levin, a titanic figure who was one of the pioneers of health services research as applied to medical imaging. Dr. Levin's work revealed the cost of physician self-referral to the U.S. healthcare system and laid the academic groundwork for efforts to roll it back.
In fact, Dr. Levin was a co-author on a new paper that documents the rise, fall, and stabilization of imaging use in both the Medicare and private payor systems that we highlighted this week.
SalaryScan ends tomorrow
If you haven't yet filled out our SalaryScan survey, you've got just a couple days left. SalaryScan lets radiology professionals research benefits and compensation plans across roles, geographic areas, and areas of subspecialty. But SalaryScan is only as good as the data that goes into it, and that's why we need your help. The survey is open for data collection through midnight February 9, so help us help you!
Disclosure: AuntMinnie.com is a sister company of IMV Medical Information Division.
