Written by Brian Dunham
Independent nuclear laboratories are under a mandate to achieve accreditation by Jan. 1, 2012, to continue receiving Medicare reimbursement. While maneuvering the varied accreditation processes requires practice management savvy—causing some practices to prolong the process—the impending deadline is approaching fast.
The American College of Radiology (ACR) is seeking to clarify the Joint Commission's
Sentinel Event Alert, related to radiation-based imaging.
Healthcare providers need to use diagnostic radiation sparingly and cautiously, implored the Joint Commission in Issue 47 of
Sentinel Event Alert. It also implied a recommendation for obtaining information about patients' recent radiation from other providers.
SAN ANTONIO—According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), all non-hospital providers of advanced diagnostic imaging, inclusive of nuclear medicine, MR, CT and PET, must obtain accreditation as a condition for reimbursement by Jan. 1, 2012. Just who is authorized to offer such accreditation was the subject of a June 26 afternoon presentation at the 2011 Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI) conference & expo.
The explosion of social media has made social networking a popular and often beneficial platform for communication and marketing by patients and physicians; but healthcare providers may expose themselves to serious legal risks by engaging in social networking, the extent of which are not yet known, according to a communication in the May issue of the Journal of the American College of Radiology.
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