Journal of the American College of Radiology : JACR
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The overall health of academic radiology suffers from insufficient funds and manpower. Although the largest academic programs in the country may have sufficient resources to maintain robust academic environments, one third to half of the academic radiology programs in the United States are struggling to maintain stable academic environments. The impact of an impaired academic radiology enterprise on the specialty of radiology is far reaching. ⋯ Fortunately, radiology is a lucrative specialty, and we have the wherewithal to help ourselves. To ensure a vibrant future for our specialty each of us must accept an obligation to invest in our academic foundation. In particular, private practice radiologists must recognize this obligation and pledge their time and/or resources to help shore up the academic departments.
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Self-referral in diagnostic imaging has adverse consequences for our health care system. It inevitably leads to overutilization. If untrained physicians try to interpret images, they will make avoidable errors. ⋯ These statements are backed up by abundant evidence in the medical literature. Major payers such as Medicare and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association are aware of the problem. There are a number of possible remedies, and it remains to be seen whether they and other payers will adopt them.
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A medical educator has needs that are specific to educators and needs that are common to all medical faculty members. An educator needs time to perform educational duties; space to carry out educational activities; and money to buy time, space, and other resources. Just as important as time, space, and money are to the success of an educator is having an infrastructure that supports the educator and the educational mission. Such an infrastructure includes a system that provides educational leadership opportunities, institutional support for medical education, opportunities and funding for medical education research, students, feedback from students and peers, faculty development and mentoring, national societal support for education, and an institutional agenda that values education to the degree that it values patient care and investigative research.
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Computed tomography (CT) is widely used in the initial evaluation of blunt trauma patients and is associated with a high rate of negative imaging. A described benefit of negative imaging is prompt discharge. This study examined a single level 1 trauma center to determine whether adult blunt trauma patients are discharged from the emergency department (ED) after negative CT of the abdomen and pelvis (CT AP). ⋯ Under current practice, negative CT AP after blunt trauma results in a statistically significant decrease in admissions.