Dear AuntMinnie Member,
The votes have been counted in the semifinal round of the Minnies, with our expert panel selecting the candidates who will face off in the final round of our annual event recognizing excellence in radiology.
Who will be selected as Most Influential Radiology Researcher: Dr. David Bluemke, PhD, of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, or Danny Hughes, PhD, of the Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute? And will Dr. Daniel Kopans of Massachusetts General Hospital be chosen as the Most Effective Radiology Educator, or will the award go to Dr. Geraldine McGinty of Weill Cornell Medical College?
The Minnies include a dozen other categories, including Scientific Paper of the Year, Best New Radiology Device, and Best New Radiology Vendor. Check out the full list of finalists at minnies.auntminnie.com.
Meanwhile, there are still a few days left to vote in our Best Radiology Image category on our Facebook page -- just click here to participate.
Medicare quality measures
Are the measures that Medicare has developed to track physician quality on the mark when it comes to radiologists? A new study in the Journal of the American College of Radiology hints that they might be falling short.
Researchers from Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute analyzed the extent to which radiologists met a basket of six criteria created to assess physician performance by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). They found that radiologists tended to get lower scores than other healthcare providers.
But that could be because the CMS criteria do not take into account the unique nature of the work that radiologists do, in which a diagnostic report is the final outcome. Learn more by clicking here.
Personalized screening
The concept of "personalized screening" for diseases such as breast cancer is all the rage in public health circles. But is personalized screening simply a euphemism for healthcare rationing?
That's the provocative idea behind a new column by Dr. Stephen Feig that ran in the American Journal of Roentgenology. We covered the article in our Women's Imaging Community -- check it out by clicking here.
