Dear AuntMinnie Member,
The slow-motion train wreck that is the U.S. government shutdown has the rest of the world looking on in shock and disbelief. The debacle is prompting at least one overseas commentator to offer his prescription for what he believes ails the U.S. healthcare system.
European radiologist Dr. Peter Rinck sees U.S. medicine as rife with overpriced services and questionable quality. He cites the example of international health insurance brokers who advise air evacuation to Europe as a cheaper alternative to paying U.S. prices for medical care for conditions that aren't life-threatening. "There is a chasm between the U.S. and the rest of the developed world that cannot be explained by the standard of medicine," he writes in an article for our AuntMinnieEurope.com sister site.
Dr. Rinck's solution will probably not find much favor in a political environment already hypercharged by debate over Obamacare, but here goes anyway: a government-regulated healthcare system with low reimbursement ceilings, a separation of physicians from the insurance business, and nationwide universal (and obligatory) health insurance.
Read the rest of his prescription by clicking here or visiting AuntMinnieEurope.com.
Mobile image viewer works well
In other news, a commercially available mobile image viewer app running on an Apple iPad worked well in providing clinicians with rapid access to radiology images, without a statistically significant loss in diagnostic quality, according to researchers from the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, AZ.
The researchers compared the app to two desktop-based image-viewing software programs: one was a commercially available PACS application for diagnostic review, while the other was an application developed at Mayo for clinical image review.
The mobile viewing app drastically cut the amount of time required to access images for both radiologists and nonradiologists to just over two minutes, while scores for diagnostic confidence were comparable between the three applications.
Learn more by clicking here, or visit our Advanced Visualization Digital Community at av.auntminnie.com.
RTs and PACS
Finally, visit our PACS Digital Community for a new story on the importance of considering radiologic technologists (RTs) when evaluating new PACS technology.
While radiologists are the most visible users of PACS software, technologists are also an important constituency to consider. RTs must be able to access digital images in the PACS in a timely fashion to assess image quality and keep radiology workflow moving, according to the researchers.
The group surveyed more than 100 RTs to learn more about their hopes and desires for PACS software ... find out what they discovered by clicking here, or visit the community at pacs.auntminnie.com.
