Diagnostic Imaging Intelligence Report

UnitedHealthcare has extended its imaging accreditation deadline to the fourth quarter of 2009, in part because of recent Medicare legislation passed by Congress.

Newly announced changes to the Stark law prohibiting physician self-referrals will require many diagnostic imaging providers to restructure common joint venture arrangements. The revisions, announced as part of the 2009 Final Hospital Inpatient Prospective Payment Systems rule, finalize a number of proposals that have come out of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) over the past year.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on August 15 announced a long-awaited proposed regulation that would replace the ICD-9-CM code sets now used to report health care diagnoses and procedures with greatly expanded ICD-10 code sets, effective Oct. 1, 2011.

A Medicare advisory panel has expressed doubts that industry-sponsored data on the use of positron emission tomography (PET) scans to diagnose and evaluate nine cancers could apply more widely to other cancers.

The usage of injectable perflutren microsphere ultrasound (micro-bubble) contrast agents, which help to evaluate heart wall motion, declined in the second quarter of 2008 to 22 percent of the usage just two years earlier, according to market research firm Arlington Medical Resources (AMR; Malvern, Pa.).

On July 31, 2008, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released the final 2009 inpatient physician fee schedule rule (the final rule), which included a number of important revisions to the Stark law. Most notably, these changes will make it increasingly difficult for a hospital or health system (or other corporate partner) and referring physicians to collaborate in an imaging center, ambulatory surgical center, cancer center, cardiac catheterization lab, and other types of outpatient joint ventures. Specifically, the rule changes tackle "under arrangement" transactions and other turn-key management arrangements involving referring physician ownership in a management company, as well as transactions that involve a variable fee that is based on a per-unit or percentage-based fee component.

RadNet Inc. (Los Angeles) reported a second-quarter loss August 11 as expenses overshadowed an increase in revenue.

Alliance Imaging (Anaheim, Calif.) reported that revenue for the second quarter of 2008 increased 9.9 percent to $122.8 million, compared with the same period in 2007. For the first six months of 2008, revenue increased 9.4 percent to $241.9 million when compared to the first six months of 2007.

The Medical Imaging & Technology Alliance (MITA) is praising two recent studies that it says reinforce the health and economic benefits of cardiac scans and serve as important reminders of the value of medical imaging.

The introduction of two news oncology products this year is helping drive growth for Varian Medical Systems (Palo Alto, Calif.).

The 10 stocks in the G-2 Report’s Diagnostic Imaging Index rose by an unweighted average of 9 percent in the five weeks ended Aug. 22, 2008, with seven stocks rising and three falling.

The number of patients making radiation therapy visits rose about 5 percent between 2006 and 2007, from 23.2 million to 24.5 million, according to a new report from IMV Medical Information (Des Plaines, Ill.). The visits were most common for three types of cancer: prostate (21 percent), breast (20 percent), and lung (13 percent).