Enter Your Email Address to Receive a
Copy of MedicExhange Member Demograhpics

The ACR (American College of Radiology) strongly opposes the current medical imaging cuts contained in The Health Care and Education Affordability Reconciliation Act of 2010.

The ACR strongly opposes the current medical imaging cuts contained in The Health Care and Education Affordability Reconciliation Act of 2010 (H.R. 4872) which will shift necessary imaging care to large hospitals, increase the cost to Medicare of appropriate imaging, produce longer commutes and wait times for patients to receive care, and cause potentially life threatening delays in diagnosis and treatment of cancer and other serious illnesses.

Specifically, the bill, would immediately raise the imaging equipment utilization rate assumption, the time during office hours that imaging equipment is assumed to be in operation, from the current 50 percent rate to 75 percent. This would apply to all diagnostic imaging equipment priced over $1 million, which includes MR and CT machines. Senate health care reform legislation would have set the equipment utilization rate for all advanced diagnostic imaging services at 65 percent through 2012, 70 percent in 2013 and 75 percent in 2014 and beyond. 

The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) has previously stated and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services agreed that the survey used to justify a large increase in the utilization rate, based on data from six large urban areas, was not sufficient to drive national reimbursement policy. These cuts, on top of an average 23 percent reduction from the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, totaling $13.8 billion, will restrict and possibly end the ability of many nonhospital providers to offer imaging services, particularly in rural areas where equipment is needed, but utilized less frequently.

Medical imaging exams are directly linked to greater life expectancy, declines in cancer mortality, and are generally less expensive than the invasive procedures they replace. Patients get the right scan, at the right time, for the right indication. Blind cuts to imaging based on faulty information will restrict access to care and may retard or reverse advances in care that imaging has helped produce.

Discuss more about Radiology in the Radiology user group.

Source: ACR