The World of Radiology and Imaging Informatics Keeps Turning—Faster and Faster, These Days

Editor’s Note: Healthcare Innovation is presenting our Imaging Virtual Day next Wednesday, September 30. Next Wednesday, we’ll host national leaders among radiologists, as well as business leaders in the imaging informatics space, for a discussion on how to strategize forward around imaging informatics in this constantly shifting landscape.

There really has never been a more unsettled and unpredictable time for radiologists and radiology than now, in U.S. healthcare. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic hit our healthcare systems, radiologists were already almost uniquely in the sights of federal healthcare policymakers, who have seen diagnostic imaging procedures as exceptionally expensive, and radiologists as exceptionally highly paid for what they do, even compared to other specialists. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has been using a variety of levers, including Medicare fee schedules, to try to control diagnostic imaging expenditures in our healthcare system.