Dear AuntMinnie Member,
A group of Illinois imaging centers has agreed to pay $1.2 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the state attorney general charging that the centers allegedly paid kickbacks to doctors in exchange for referrals.
As reported in our MRI Digital Community, Attorney General Lisa Madigan said the settlement would close the state's case against MIDI and the 14 imaging centers it operates in Illinois. The lawsuit claimed that the MIDI centers had set up "sham" time-share lease arrangements with referring physicians; the centers had claimed the deals were lawful.
Get more details on the settlement by clicking here, or visit the MRI Digital Community at mri.auntminnie.com.
Contract renewal tips
In other news, radiology groups heading into contract renewal negotiations with hospitals will need to take a different approach from what's been used in the past.
That's according to healthcare legal and economics expert Mark F. Weiss, who has written an article on new contract renewal strategies for our Imaging Center Digital Community. Mr. Weiss believes that many tactics that have worked in the past -- such as focusing on practice benchmarking -- are no longer going to work in today's economic environment.
Find out what he believes you should do to renew your contract by clicking here, or visit the community at imagingcenter.auntminnie.com.
Report on isotope crisis
Finally, a new report from the National Academy of Sciences found no technical barriers to the creation of a U.S. source for molybdenum-99 (Mo-99), the raw material for the commonly used medical radioisotope technetium-99m. Technetium-99m supplies have been interrupted several times in the past few years, leaving nuclear medicine specialists scrambling for an alternative.
The report states that converting existing nuclear reactors from producing high-enriched uranium to the type of low-enriched uranium (LEU) that could be used in Mo-99 production is feasible in the U.S. -- the primary obstacle is the lack of incentives or a government mandate for the industry to convert. Get more details by clicking here, or visit the Molecular Imaging Digital Community at molecular.auntminnie.com.
