ACR Supports MedPAC Decision to Recommend Quality and Safety Standards for Medical Imaging Providers
March 9, 2005
Contact: Shawn Farley
(703) 648-8936
E-mail: shawnf@acr.org
Unnecessary and Inferior Medical Imaging Lowers Quality of Care and Drains American Health Care System
RESTON, Va - The American College of Radiology (ACR) applauds Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) members for their recommendation that Congress enact laws directing the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) to set quality and safety standards that providers performing medical imaging, physicians interpreting these images, and facilities providing medical imaging services must meet in order to bill Medicare.
The ACR also supports the commission's recommendation that Congress include nuclear medicine and PET procedures under existing federal self-referral (Stark) law and tighten other aspects of Stark law dealing with physician ownership. These recommendations will help to ensure that Medicare beneficiaries receive high-quality, safe medical imaging from the most qualified providers.
Radiological procedures are medically prescriptive in nature and should be utilized only by appropriately trained and certified providers under medically necessary circumstances. Radiologists are the medical doctors who have received at least 4 to 6 years of unique, specific, post–medical school training in radiation safety, the optimal performance of radiological procedures, and interpretation of medical images. This training is rare, if mandated at all, in most other medical specialties. Utilization of medical imaging procedures by unqualified providers may needlessly expose patients to radiation and radiation levels that could be unduly hazardous.
Since 2000, imaging utilization growth among nonradiologists is up to more than twice that of radiologists, due in large part to many entrepreneurial nonradiologist physicians investing in imaging equipment, which is rarely, if ever, subject to any accreditation or inspection process, and performing imaging procedures in their own practices, often without the required skills and expertise of a trained, certified radiologist or certified nonphysician clinical personnel. In fact, more than half of nonhospital imaging performed in the United States is now done by nonradiologists.
Not only does this trend lower quality of care and potentially place patients at risk, but it drains the American health care system of billions of dollars annually. Diagnostic imaging is the fastest-growing type of physician service expenditure in the United States, with an annual growth rate (9%) that is 3 times that of other physician services (3%). ACR data show that if Congress follows through on the MedPAC commissioners' recommendations and enacts facility-accreditation and personnel-certification requirements, Medicare can save up to $8 billion over the next decade. This would be a major step in protecting the solvency of this important taxpayer-supported program and ensuring that Americans are receiving the highest quality care from the physicians most qualified to provide imaging services.
"The ACR is pleased the MedPAC has taken this important first step toward ensuring patient safety and access to quality care. We look forward to working with the Congress and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to give them all the information and assistance that they may need to enact laws that will safeguard the patients that we serve and protect the high quality of care that Americans deserve," said James P. Borgstede, MD, FACR, chair of the ACR Board of Chancellors.
The ACR invites input from all medical specialties on this matter and calls on all physicians to help ensure patient safety and preserve access to quality health care by appropriately utilizing medical imaging procedures.
Click here to see the MedPAC report in its entirety (chapter 3 regards medical imaging and begins on page 143).
To arrange an interview with Borgstede or another ACR officer, please contact ACR Public Relations Manager Shawn Farley at (703) 648-8936 or shawnf@acr.org.
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The ACR is a national professional organization serving more than 32,000 diagnostic radiologists, radiation oncologists, interventional radiologists, nuclear medicine physicians, and medical physicists, with programs focusing on the practice of radiology and the delivery of comprehensive health care services.