News from CARS show; cardiac MRI cuts ER costs; new MPFS rates

Dear AuntMinnie Member,

In this edition of Letter from the Editor, we're highlighting news coming out of Geneva, where the Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery (CARS) meeting has just wrapped up.

International editor Eric Barnes was on hand to cover the CARS proceedings, which have included the latest cutting-edge research in PACS and advanced visualization technologies. In one study presentation, Japanese researchers discussed their development of a computer-aided detection technique to diagnose Crohn's disease.

In other news from the conference, Dutch researchers discussed how they developed a rating scale to quantify how much value facilities are getting from their PACS networks, while Toward the Electronic Patient Record (TEPR) founder C. Peter Waegemann opened the conference by describing his vision of the future of mobile healthcare.

Cardiac MRI cuts ER costs

In other news, cardiac CT has been getting most of the attention lately as a possible alternative to conventional assessment of patients with chest pain. But researchers from Duke University in Durham, NC, wanted to try cardiac MRI instead.

Cardiac MRI can examine several aspects of the heart, such as cardiac edema and heart motion, with a single exam. But the modality is generally thought to be more complex to perform than cardiac CT.

What did the researchers find? Learn more in our MRI Digital Community by clicking here, or go to mri.auntminnie.com.

New MPFS rates

Finally, the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services this week issued its proposed Medicare Physician Fee Schedule for 2011, which sets new Medicare payment rates and implements provisions of the healthcare reform legislation enacted earlier this year.

The bad news is that the new MPFS rates include a 6.1% payment cut that could add up to close to a 30% reduction if Congress doesn't address the sustainable growth rate (SGR) issue by the time the current temporary fix expires. The good news is that the cuts might not happen at all if Congress gets its act together on the SGR issue. Learn more by clicking here, or visit the Imaging Leaders Digital Community at leaders.auntminnie.com.