Fiscal Year 2022 Top Accomplishments

• As a result of ACR efforts, Medicare conversion factor rate for physicians increased by 3% for calendar year 2022 and 4% statutory pay-as-you-go requirement Medicare reductions were averted until 2023.
• Advocated to extend the current delay in implementing the 2009 United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) screening mammography recommendations through Jan. 1, 2023 to ensure women have access to screening mammography annually starting at age 40.
• Radiation Safety — Following years of ACR advocacy, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Commissioners voted against an ACR-opposed effort by the radiopharmaceutical industry to weaken Authorized User (AU) training and experience criteria to readily enable referring physicians to inappropriately serve as AUs of radiological materials on facilities’ NRC and Agreement State licenses.
• ACR has elevated its efforts with respect to scope of practice, including representation on the AMA Scope of Practice Partnership Steering Committee, a new ACRA Scope of Practice Fund, and a new scope of practice microsite to serve as a resource for members and chapters.

ACR Center for Research and Innovation™

Conducted the following research to advance breast cancer screening methodology:

• TMIST recruitment occurs at 123 sites in the United States, Canada, Argentina, Peru, Italy and South Korea, with new sites still joining.
• Advanced breast screening methodology by expanding the Tomosynthesis Mammographic Imaging Screening Trial (TMIST) led by Etta Pisano, MD, FACR, and the new Contrast-Enhanced Mammography Tomographic Imaging Screening Trial (CMIST).
• CMIST, led by Christopher Comstock, MD, FACR, stimulated several associated research projects that will compare contrast-enhanced spectral mammography to digital breast tomosynthesis mammography to target optimal screening approaches for different populations at various risk levels for developing cancer.

Fund for Collaborative Research in Imaging (FCRI) Grant

Investment in novel research ideas:

The FCRI provides stimulus funds for promising, novel research projects that may lead to advancement in the field of radiology. In FY22, FCRI provided funds in the amounts of $200,000 each to:

• Christopher Whitlow, MD, of Wake Forest University and Allison Shapiro, PhD, MPH, of University of Colorado, for a proof-of-concept study on preclinical imaging biomarkers of Alzheimer’s disease neuropathology in young adults with youth-onset diabetes.
• Sherwin Chan, MD, PhD, and Alain Cuna, MD, of The Children’s Mercy Hospital, for the Multicenter Randomized Controlled Trial of Bowel Ultrasound for Diagnosis of Necrotizing Enterocolitis.

ACR National Clinical Imaging Research Registry™ (ANCIRR)

Real-world data and evidence changing the face of research:

• ANCIRR represents a growing number of imaging data registries that help support AI development and also answer important research questions. In FY22, ANCIRR engaged in planning for the Breast Imaging Research Registry and Liver Imaging Research Registry, both anticipated to begin collecting data in 2023.
• Developed registries to demonstrate the benefit of structured reporting (TI-RADS™, ACT-RADS), show the value of radiology to expand reimbursement (NOPR, IDEAS, New IDEAS) and create datasets of patient clinical data and associated medical images from multiple institutions to study outcomes (I-ROAR).

New IDEAS: Imaging Dementia—Evidence for Amyloid Scanning Study

• At the close of FY22, 27.3% of total accruals (n=3,391) self-identified into underrepresented minority study cohorts of either Black/African American or Hispanic/Latinx.

Alzheimer’s Network for Treatment and Diagnostics (ALZ-NET)

• Development and launch of ALZ-NET, a national network for providers that collects clinical data to offer better insight into the long-term health outcomes for patients who receive new FDA-approved Alzheimer's drugs and therapies. ACR will continue to serve as the operations and management center for the network.

ACR Bulletin

• Won awards in several categories in the American Society of Business Publication Editors’ annual Azbee awards competition.
  
  • April 2021 special issue “Overcoming Barriers to Care” won a national silver award for its front cover design, as well as a national bronze award for its special issue writing.
  • “PHM in Your Practice column,” won a regional silver award.
  • March 2021 cover story on cybersecurity, “Recovery Mode,” also won a regional silver award.

Journal of the American College of Radiology (JACR®)

• The JACR Health Policy Expert Panel (co-lead by Joshua Liao, MD, and Christoph Lee, MD) was established and produces quarterly articles on timely health policy and practice management topics affecting radiology.
• Special issues included Health Equity, the Inspirational Issue, and the May AC Supplement (online only). Focus issues covered topics including Medical Physics, the Science of Medical Education, and Legal Issues.

Increased Social Media Engagement

• Engagement rate (1.4%) meets or exceeds industry standards (0.5%) across Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Enhanced and Streamlined Patient- and Family-Centered Resources

• Launched a new web hub featuring aggregated resources from the Patient- and Family- Centered Commission. In addition, mammographysaveslives.org content was successfully migrated to acr.org. This move offers patients, referring physicians and members a more streamlined and intuitive way to access this content and fully integrates it with ACR information and resources for patients.

Voice of Radiology Blog Exceeds Industry Benchmarks

• The ACR Voice of Radiology Blog reached an average 85% open rate, nearly four times the healthcare industry average.

• The ACR Data Science Institute® (DSI) in coordination with the ACR Center for Research and Innovation continued to work on a multimillion-dollar grant funded by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering to further research on COVID-19. The effort, a collaboration between the ACR, the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) and the American Association of Physicists in Medicine has culminated in a public resource, the Medical Imaging and Data Resource Center, to further our understanding of COVID-19 and promote the development of artificial intelligence algorithms.
• The DSI collaborated with the FDA to study the real-world implementation of AI algorithms. Efforts included a public workshop focused on transparency of AI and a study to evaluate the performance characteristics of algorithms in real-world settings.
• The DSI conducted several federated learning experiments that utilizes ACRConnect and AI-Lab to train models across multiple facilities while the data remains onsite.
• The Informatics Commission launched a cybersecurity initiative including:
  
  • A session at the 2022 ACR Annual Meeting entitled the “Cybersecurity Primer for Practicing Radiologists”
  • The ACR Cybersecurity Resource Hub, a subsection of the e-learning hub designed to equip radiologists with the necessary tools and knowledge to keep them, their patients and organizations safe.
• ACR Cortex, a web-based radiology learning and assessment platform, continued to support high-fidelity, case-based learning and knowledge assessment across a variety of learning programs. Cortex was used to deliver DXIT/TXIT and online micro-cources for the ACR Education Center.

• Updated the AIRP Case Archive System (ACAS) interface for resident submissions of cases.
• Changed our Best Cases interface to better demonstrate Rad-Path Correlation.
• Launched a program to convert new Young and Early Career Professional Section members to full members.
• Admitted the newest musculoskeletal radiology fellow to study for one year.

Online offerings at the ACR Education Center included:

• 1,123 registrants.
• 63 virtual courses.

Case in Point®

• Case in Point accomplished its third collaboration with the PIER program resulting in 27 medical students submitting cases to be published. CiP is the leader in ACR CME with participants completing 1,000+ cases daily and 40,000+ CME awarded per month.

Radiology-TEACHES®

• Launched an authoring mentor/mentee group and have connected over 30 radiologist mentors with medical students (and even more students are still awaiting mentors).
• Enrollment included 71% MD programs and 41% DO programs.

• 711 residents and fellows participated in 2021–2022 RLI resident leadership programing, including RLI Resident Milestones, RLI Leadership Essentials, RLI Kickstart Your Career, and RLI Resident and Young Physician Leadership (held in conjunction with the 2021 RLI Summit) programs.
• The RLI Taking the Lead podcast celebrated its four-year anniversary with the release of its 47th episode.

• The ACR 2022 Annual Meeting, held in a hybrid format, included caucus meetings, ACR elections and Council deliberations, along with a Chapter Leaders’ Workshop, and programming for the RFS and YPS.
• Presented 79 e-abstracts at ACR 2022.
• Awarded four chapter grants to support innovative initiatives at the chapter level.
• Engage, the ACR’s online community, celebrated its fifth anniversary
• 23 chapters received Chapter Recognition Awards for excellence in government relations, meetings/education, membership, and quality and safety.
• Hosted the second Annual Virtual Medical Student Symposium, with attendance by 380 medical students, an increase of 26% over the prior year
• Launched a new Medical Student Journal Club to provide medical students an opportunity to critically analyze, evaluate and present medical literature pertaining to radiology.
• Launched a new members-only, bimonthly Medical Student Update that contains original content written by medical students for medical students.
• Increased medical student membership by over 35%.

Presented new strategy and research plan, including 44 new projects in the key focus areas of health equity, economic modeling and non-physician practitioner scope of practice.

Research that impacts health equity: An AJR study by NHPI researchers was cited in a letter by William Thorwarth Jr., MD, FACR, to CMS on February 22, 2022, to make the case for expanded access to imaging in rural America.

New name: The HPI center at the Institute of Health System Science at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research launched a new official name: NHPI Policy Research and IMaging Effectiveness (PRIME) Center.

Expanded data tools:

• Developed the Neiman Almanac new data series to determine how often people stay in their home state or go out of state to receive care.
• Expanded the Neiman Almanac to include data back to 2020 and released NITOS 4.0 update in January 2022.

Increased visibility and impact of HPI research:

• Held AIRP-HPI Comparative Effectiveness Research virtual training courses in September 2021, October 2021, February 2022 and March 2022.
  
  • A new strategic plan developed with program director, Stella Kang, MD, aims to expand the reach of the course and to provide clear learning pathways for attendees.
  • Pina Sanelli, MD, presented the live course for the September 2021 session on “Introduction to Clinical Effectiveness Research”.
  • Gelareh Sadigh, MD, gave the live course for the October 2021 session on “Barriers to Imaging”.
  • Andrew Rosenkrantz, MD, delivered the live course for the February 2022 session on “Publishing Your Paper: Pearls and Pitfalls”.
  • Stuart Cohen, MD, conducted the live course for the March 2022 session on “Evaluation of Suspected Pulmonary Embolism in Pregnancy: A Comparative Effectiveness Analysis Use Case”.
• ACR Bulletin Research Rounds columns:
  • Executive Director, Elizabeth Rula, PhD, and Public Relations Manager, Nichole Gay, co-authored the September 2021 ACR Bulletin Research Rounds column on Facilitating Research and Innovation on new ACR-funded opportunities for members to make meaningful contributions to research that advance the College’s mission.
  • Elizabeth Rula, PhD, Pam Woodard, MD, and Etta Pisano, MD, discuss the opportunity the HPI and FCRI grant programs present to advance the field of radiology and bring better care to patients in the June 2022 column. 
  • Elizabeth Rula, PhD, Executive Director of the Neiman Institute, wrote the May 2022 column on Price Transparency: Progress or Problems?
• In the news:
  
  • The HPI JAMA Open Network study “Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the Use of Prostate Magnetic Resonance Imaging Following an Elevated Prostate-Specific Antigen Test” received over 4,000 total views, has a 135 Altmetric score and was covered by 5 major news outlets: US News – Health, AuntMinnie, Radiology Business, ITN Editor, and The Imaging Wire.
  • Other studies received multiple media pick-up from AuntMinnie, Radiology Business and other media outlets.

24 new HPI studies published and 11 conference speaking engagements.

• Various PFCC committees produced provocative and successful webinars and podcasts including:
  
  • Lung Cancer Screening Webinar Series
  • Pleural Space podcast
  • Economics
  • Population Health Management ACR Bulletin Podcast
  • Leveraging Payment Models to Achieve Population Health Management Success: Strategies for Real-World Action
  • RLI Power Hour: Population Health Management
  • Breaking Imaging Barriers webinar series
• Several members of the PFCC Outreach Committee are involved with the USA Women’s Health Access Program, a collaborative effort of RAD-AID,ACR PFCC Outreach Committee, Hologic and Black Women’s Health Imperative.
• Collaborated with the Department of Veterans Affairs, Veterans Experience, to improve VA healthcare service delivery.

• The ACR NRDR® platform continued to evolve, such as adding new role for a clinical lead to better engage physicians in using registry data for quality improvement and including additional risk factors and cancer staging information for the Lung Cancer Registry.
  
  
• Completed the LI-RADS® Assist module and MSK-RADS released the Assessment Category table as well as Scoring System with management recommendations and assessment categories with predictive features.
  
  
• Presented the Closing the Loop on Follow-Up Recommendations for Actionable Incidental Findings Measure Set was presented to the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and other grantees, furthering our commitment to ongoing stewardship of the measures, facilitating adoption, continuous testing and integration into the NRDR General Radiology Improvement Database.
  
  
• Approved a new quality measure concept for ensuring evidence-based follow-up for patients with abdominal aortic aneurysm.