Dear AuntMinnie Member,
Your favorite writing radiologist is back this week. Dr. Mary Morrison Saltz returns to our Imaging Leaders Digital Community with her latest musing, this time on the need for a digital replacement for the x-ray film jacket.
In the years before PACS, radiologists would use the film jacket for a variety of back-channel communications meant for their imaging brethren -- cryptic notes that might range from a key finding to an important comment on a patient's personal history.
This communication channel has been lost with the move to digital image management, and Mary thinks it's time to consider bringing it back. Perhaps this role could be filled by a radiology wiki: a website developed and maintained by a community of users for sharing knowledge. Learn more about this intriguing idea by clicking here, or go to leaders.auntminnie.com.
Kopans on mammography
Also returning is Dr. Daniel Kopans, who has developed a reputation as one of mammography's most ardent defenders. He's not happy about an article by Bleyer and Welch in the New England Journal of Medicine that claimed that up to one-third of mammography-detected cancers represent "overdiagnosis," or cancers that would never represent a health threat during a woman's lifetime.
Dr. Kopans picks apart the study and the overdiagnosis argument in an article you can read by clicking here. He believes that research such as the NEJM study is an example of "a concerted effort to try to reduce access to mammography screening."
Do you agree? If so, let us know in our Forums.
New AuntMinnie Forums
While we're on the subject of Forums, check out two new dedicated bulletin boards we've launched this week.
Our new Academic Radiology Forum is designed to give radiologists and other personnel working in educational institutions a chance to interact with their peers, while our Interventional Radiology Forum provides the same opportunity to those working in image-guided intervention and therapy. Check them out, and let us know what you think.
MICI news
Meanwhile, Medicare reimbursement remains a major worry for radiology administrators, according to the latest edition of the Medical Imaging Confidence Index (MICI). Covering opinions and attitudes in the second quarter of this year, the MICI numbers indicate that administrators continue to show low confidence in reimbursement.
Reimbursement pressure could be weighing on administrator sentiment for future growth prospects as well. Read more about the new MICI survey by clicking here.
