Sensible Solutions for Refurbished Radiology

Posted by Eyal Aharon of Medic Vision on Nov 9, 2015.  Atlantis Worldwide would like to share this post with you!  

Ready or not, it’s coming. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) CMS pre-published the 2016 rules for Hospital Outpatient Payments and Physician Fee Schedule. 

Over the last 50 years medical imaging has repeatedly transformed medicine. X-Ray, MRI, DXA and CT Scans have changed how physicians measure, manage, diagnose, treat, and even think about medical illnesses and conditions. Technological innovations have also made imaging faster, more precise and less invasive to use. In fact, medical imaging is such an essential part of health care practice today that it often becomes the standard preliminary step for diagnosing virtually all major medical conditions and diseases. In some cases medical imaging itself is even being used to treat, manage and predict disease.

It's the 21st Century. I've said it once and I'll say it again. Technology is constantly improving. Gone are the days of Eight Tracks and Video Tapes. We live in a digital world. A great example of this is our computer monitors. Computer Monitors used to be a big box CRT that would sit on top of the desk and take up a lot of space. Fast-forward to present day where the monitor is digital and so small that it has become handheld. 

It’s never been easier to share information, thanks to tweets, text messages, blogs, social media and email, to name a few. Thankfully, that ease of connectivity is finally available in the healthcare community, between physicians, hospitals, clinics and other healthcare systems. 

For many people who are concerned with developing a better physique, recognizing the difference between weight loss and muscle loss, or weight gain and muscle gain can be a complete guessing game. Even when you start seeing the results in the mirror, watching the numbers on the scale fluctuate from day-to-day or week-to-week can be maddening. Even calculating Body-mass index (BMI) doesn’t seem to give most people any real insight into the true composition of their body. Sometimes it feels like discovering what’s actually going on is near impossible.

Have you ever gone to McDonald's? Of course, that’s a silly question, since 68 million people go to a McDonald’s every day. I’m sure you have been one of those 68 million people at one point in your life. So, when you walk up to the counter, what do you ask for? Small, medium, large or super-sized fries? That usually depends on how hungry you are. And just because the fries are super-sized doesn't make them better fries, right? It just means that you get more of them. 

Benjamin Franklin said it best. “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and probably most of you reading this have been touched by breast cancer in some way. You know someone who’s been diagnosed, someone who’s a survivor, and unfortunately, you may know someone who lost the fight with this nasty disease. 

For as long as human’s have practiced medicine, surgical procedures have almost always required the cutting, moving or removing of a patient’s tissue. At it’s core surgery will always be an invasive procedure, but as technology and surgical techniques improve, invasiveness has been minimalized and healing times have decreased. The problem is that the need to physically open the human body in some way has mostly remained.

When most people hear the word “nuclear,” the first thing that comes to mind is not so positive. Think Chernobyl. Think Fukushima Daiichi. But in the medical world, “nuclear” is a great thing. Nuclear medicine is a branch of medical imaging that uses small amounts of radioactive materials to diagnose and determine the severity a variety of diseases, including many cancers, heart disease, gastrointestinal, endocrine, neurological disorders and other abnormalities within the body. These procedures provide a wealth of valuable information that is not available through x-rays.