Dear AuntMinnie Member,
Movement is fast and furious on the U.S. legislative front, where a bill banning in-office physician self-referral could get folded into broader healthcare reform legislation.
Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) last month proposed the Integrity in Medicare Advanced Diagnostic Imaging Act of 2009 (HR 2962), which would close a loophole in the Stark anti-self-referral law that allows doctors to perform imaging in their own offices. The loophole has long been a sore point among radiologists, who claim it drives up healthcare costs.
Now it's looking like the Speier bill could be incorporated into healthcare reform legislation currently under debate in the U.S. House of Representatives. That could make the reform package slightly more palatable to the radiology community, which is chafing at proposed provisions that would cut reimbursement for advanced imaging.
Get the rest of the scoop by clicking here, or visit our Imaging Center Digital Community at centers.auntminnie.com.
Angio volume rises
In other news, procedure volume continues to grow in the noncardiac angiography systems market, according to a new market research report from IMV Medical Information Division of Des Plaines, IL.
The report found that procedure volume at angio labs has risen at a steady single-digit clip for the past four years, even as volume has declined at sites that perform cardiac catheterization. What's driving the divergence? Find out by clicking here, or visit our Digital X-Ray Community at xray.auntminnie.com.
Prospective CT image quality
Finally, learn about a new clinical study that compared coronary CT angiography (CTA) with a low-dose prospective gating technique to CTA with conventional retrospective gating. Although previous research has demonstrated prospective gating's ability to reduce radiation dose, Italian researchers performed one of the first formal studies comparing image quality between the two techniques.
Find out how prospective CT fared by clicking here, or visit our Cardiac Imaging Digital Community at cardiac.auntminnie.com.
