Journal of the American College of Radiology : JACR
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When all patients are required to pay the same out-of-pocket amount for imaging services, which have varying degrees of benefit dependent on patient characteristics, there is potential for overuse and underuse. Rising costs of health care have stimulated efforts to redesign health care packages. ⋯ With value-based insurance design, cost sharing is still used, but a "clinically sensitive" approach is designed to mitigate the adverse health consequences of high out-of-pocket costs. The authors summarize the principles of value-based insurance design and review examples of its implementation in other areas of medicine.
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The study's purpose was to determine the effectiveness of a didactic lecture for teaching and evaluating radiology resident dictation skills. ⋯ Test scores for PGY 2 to PGY 4 residents significantly increased after didactic instruction on the reporting and communication of diagnostic imaging results. These findings suggest that a lecture and test format can be used to teach and assess radiology resident reporting and communication skills.
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Meta Analysis
Turf wars in radiology: updated evidence on the relationship between self-referral and the overutilization of imaging.
In a previous article in this series, published in 2004, the authors reviewed the medical literature for evidence on the relationship between self-referral and the utilization of imaging. That evidence demonstrated that self-referral led to substantially higher levels of utilization with its attendant increases in cost and the exposure of patients to unnecessary radiation. ⋯ Once again, the evidence clearly indicates that self-referral results in the overutilization of imaging. Because radiologists have an important stake in the matter, it behooves them to be familiar with this recent evidence so they can bring it to the attention of policymakers in their areas.
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To describe the employment market for diagnostic radiologists in 2007-2008, with attention to differences among subspecialties. ⋯ The overall job market remains very much intermediate between the highs and lows that have occurred since 1990, but finding highly desirable jobs is likely to be somewhat more difficult, and filling vacancies somewhat easier, in 2008 than in the past few years. There was a strong indication of a 3% surplus of radiologists in 2007. Interventional radiology, pediatric radiology, and particularly breast imaging are the subspecialties in which positions are most difficult to fill; neuroradiology, general radiology, and nuclear radiology may lie at the opposite end of the spectrum.