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Dr. David Blumenthal, National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, recently announced that ONC has awarded $60 million in research grants through the Strategic Health IT Advanced Research Projects (SHARP) program to four renowned institutions.

The research grants worth $60 million were awarded to Mayo Clinic of Medicine, Harvard University, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston,  and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign  through the SHARP program.

Dr. David Blumenthal said , “The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) has created a solid foundation of programs and initiatives to support health care practitioners and hospitals in implementing meaningful use of certified EHR technology, but we are admittedly at the beginning of our journey. ONC is keenly aware that technology needs to continuously advance, bringing new solutions that will make it even more beneficial. While I’m proud of what ONC has achieved so far, I’m humbled by the size of the task still in front of us.”

The research projects in these institutions will be set to identify solutions – long-term as well as short-term – to address the fundamental challenges which include -

Researchers, the technology industry, and health care providers will be leading the multidisciplinary teams, and these teams are supposed to conduct these projects. The results of the team work will be practiced by producing innovative health IT solutions, so they can be deployed nationwide.

21st March 2010 saw the passage of healthcare reform bill by the U.S. House of Representatives with President Obama signing on the bill to pass it into law on March 23. For the betterment of the law, the Senate and the House passed an additional healthcare reform legislation on March 25, under budget reconciliation which will be signed by the President on March 30.

But, certain imaging related provisions contained in the bill affects ACR members. These issues are summarised below:

In a non-hospital environment, the utilization assumption rate helps in determining the technical side of reimbursement. This rate for equipments with a cost of $1 million and above is noted to be 62.5 percent in 2010, which will be increased to 75 percent by 2011, according to CMS. It is expected that the rate will increase to 90 percent by 2013. ACR could successfully influence the efforts of the Congress to raise the rate to 90 percent by 2011.

There will be an increase of 50 percent in discount for contiguous body parts by 2011, which is only 25 percent in 2010.

The new healthcare reform law comes as a blow to insurers as it, based on recommendations made by the US Preventative Services Task Force, prohibits insurers from denying coverage for breast cancer screening exams prohibits.

Self-referring physicians would have to inform their patients in writing that the physician/facility will benefit financially from the imaging procedure. The physician/facility should also provide a list of additional imaging facilities from which the patient may receive their imaging services. ACR will work with Congress to demonstrate the need for stricter self-referral guidelines.

The healthcare reform law has the provision for a Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMI), aimed at addressing poor clinical outcomes or potentially avoidable expenditures. There is also a suggestion by ACR about linking payments to physicians who order advanced diagnostic imaging services to their adherence to and use of appropriateness criteria for the ordering of such services.

The rule also requires Medicare to reimburse DXA and VFA during 2010 and 2011 and that too at no less than 70 percent of the 2006 rates. This way DXA and VFA will be reimbursed at approximately $98 and $27 respectively.

Though the new law doesn’t repeal or make permanent Medicare’s Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula, there are chances that the deadline for the 2009 SGR rates, which expires on April 5, may be extended until April 30. When the Congress returns from its two week spring recess, there is the likelihood of another bill being considered, which may result in extending the 2009 payment rate deadline until September 30.

Physicians from various parts of the world are serving the survivors of Haiti earthquake by lending their expertise in saving the people. Haiti is slowly recovering from the consequences of the earthquake and some healthcare professionals from Europe and U.S. are arriving to serve the people affected with quake-related injuries, and various other illness such as pneumonia, tuberculosis elc, spread through campings.

A physicians team led by Allen Rothpearl, the Long Island radiologist, is attending the Haitians directly from New York, California and Texas, by reading 20 to 40 digital x-rays a day availing no-charge.

This was made possible through St. Damien’s, a nonprofit pediatric medical center in Haiti whose x-ray suite endured no damage at all during the quake. The builders of the medical center had constructed the radiology room with six-inch thick concrete walls to resist radiation leakage. This was actually done to reduce costs, since the usually used lead sheets for avoiding radiation leakage were very expensive.

The digital x-rays taken from the St. Damien’s reaches Dr. Rothpearl and his team automatically and they responds within an hour. A software is installed converts the x-ray images into digital, stores and finally transmits them to the New York team. The abnormalities, if found, will be alerted to Mr.Reache who supervises the St. Damien’s x-ray operations and he reports it to the physician.

The radiologist team tracked development of Haitian’s health after the quake through these remote readings. They saw mainly fractured and crushed limbs in the first few weeks. The physicians are also observing the physical conditions of the Haitians in the camps, living in the unsanitary and crowded environment.

A new equipment which upgrades the digital radiology software was donated by Dr. Rothpearl. This new equipment boosts the transmission speed and also manifolds the storage capacity of the server.

Recently, a three-month-old baby who suffered from breath shortness was diagnosed by Rothpearl from New York and found out that the child’s lungs were collapsing.

Accurate diagnosis of hip and pelvic fractures in the emergency department can speed patients to surgical management, if needed, and reduce the rate of hospital admissions among patients who do not have fractures. Use of MRI in patients with a strong clinical suspicion of traumatic injury but unimpressive X-rays has a substantial advantage in the detection of pelvic and hip fractures.

A study suggests that Virtual colonoscopy or CT colonography can detect malignant cancer outside the colon. According to the study, one out of every 200 people having no symptom of disease possess unsuspected malignant cancer, that too outside the colon.

Colonoscopy is usually done to detect Colorectal cancer, which is supposed to be one of the leading causes of cancer death in U.S. It is recommended to start colorectal cancer screening for people with average risk at the age of 50, but the uneasiness caused by the conventional optical colonoscopy resist people from undergoing screening.

Compared to optical colonoscopy, Virtual colonoscopy has many advantages.

• Less invasive
• Produce detailed image of the interior portion of colon without inserting the scope into it
• The risk of bleeding in the colon, which usually occur with the optical colonoscopy is almost null
• It can be done without sedating the patient
• The structures outside the colon, like pelvis, abdomen and portions of the lungs can be assessed to a limit with this technique. In some cases, virtual colonoscopy is used to diagnose extracolonic parts and most of them appear to be clinically relevant.
• Cost effective
• Saves on time, taking just 10 minutes or less.

The study was conducted by Pickhardt, M.D., professor of radiology and chief of GI Imaging, at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine & Public Health, and colleagues. For the study, the researchers selected 10,286 adults (5,388 men and 4,898 women) with a mean age of 59.8 years who showed no symptom of the disease. The selected population underwent colorectal cancer screening with virtual colonoscopy either at the University of Wisconsin or at National Naval Medical Center and their medical records were reviewed. It took a mean time 30.2 months for follow-up.

The results showed that 58 patients had unsuspected colorectal cancers, 22 patients had invasive colorectal cancer, extracolonic cancer was found in 36 patients and 31 patients with localized cancers.

Dr. Pickhardt commented,

Although extracolonic evaluation at screening CT colonography does carry some disadvantages, such as patient anxiety, inconvenience, or the potential for benign biopsy, our results suggest that early detection of asymptomatic extracolonic cancer represents an additional benefit of screening CT colonography that is not available with optical colonoscopy. Virtual colonoscopy is an accurate, safe and convenient screening test that could potentially be a life-saving examination.

US President Barack Obama said, its time to stop talking over healthcare reform and start voting for it, and also asked the Congress to vote for the reform.

Obama visited America’s heartland to gather suport from the wavering Democrats for the healthcare legislation. The campaign was a part of the final push in passing the healthcare reform. While Obama was heading to the speech venue, protestors lined the streets waving placards that said, “Healthcare for all,” “Kill the bill,” “Republicans for healthcare reform” and “Say no to socialism.”

In the run to collect support for the healthcare reform bill, Obama and his fellow Democrats accused the heathcare insurance industry for giving importance to profit than to patients.

Obama swore to destroy the waste in the government-run medical programs for the elderly and needy, Medicare and Medicaid.

Obama also accused his critics in scaring the public, saying that the healthcare reform bill would result in reduced access to care elderly people who completely rely on the Medicare.