Journal of the American College of Radiology : JACR
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The ACR's Practice Guidelines, Technical Standards, and Appropriateness Criteria are useful tools in resident education. The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) is increasing its focus on assessing educational outcomes in resident education to ensure that graduating residents have achieved competence to the level expected of new practitioners. The Appropriateness Criteria can be used to educate residents in cost-effective imaging practice, while the Practice Guidelines and Technical Standards are useful tools for educating residents in patient care. Incorporating these ACR resources into the resident curriculum and the goals and objectives of the training program provides a means of addressing the new ACGME requirements.
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A recent report by the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission to Congress indicated that the utilization of diagnostic imaging is growing more rapidly than that of any other type of physician service. This has engendered concern among those who pay for health care. In this article, the authors review the role of self-referral in driving up imaging utilization. ⋯ These have consistently shown that when nonradiologist physicians operate their own imaging equipment and have the opportunity to self-refer, their utilization is substantially higher than among other physicians who refer their patients to radiologists. It has also been shown that the vast bulk of the recent increases in imaging utilization are attributable to nonradiologists who self-refer. The authors estimate that the cost to the American health care system of unnecessary imaging resulting from self-referral by nonradiologists is $16 billion per year.
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Employer-sponsored retirement plans are the primary savings vehicles used by radiologists to fund their retirements. A variety of retirement plans are available with guidelines, benefits, and restrictions specified by the Internal Revenue Code. In this article, we review and summarize the salient features of these plans. A second article, in an upcoming issue of JACR, explores the current status of radiologists' retirement plans.
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The Resource Based Relative Value System (RBRVS) was established over fifteen years ago in an attempt to bring order to the Medicare reimbursement system. The RBRVS relies on a complicated formula to determine how much each procedure is worth. This article uses an unusual approach to describe the components of the RBRVS equation, how those relative values are developed and managed, and how they relate to each other, even though each one is calculated differently.