A web-enhanced telephone conference co-sponsored by NACVA and Reardon Consulting on Thursday, December 14 from 2-4 p.m. Eastern will address Pay for Performance (P4P) in physician healthcare reimbursements and its implications upon future value decisions.

Topics to be addressed include background of P4P and federal efforts, practical applications of P4P, and the legal parameters on health plan payments to providers to reward quality.

Agfa HealthCare announced today that Classic Hospitals, a group of 10 hospitals based in the United Kingdom, has signed a $2.9 million deal to install Agfa HealthCare’s Impax 6.2 PACS system. Additionally, Agfa’s computed radiography solution, the CR 35-X, will be installed in each facility to provide general and mammography digital services. The installation is expected to be completed by March.

Each of Classic Hospitals’ 10 facilities is multi-modality, including orthopaedics, gynecology, breast imaging and more.

A new study gauging the brain's response to product branding, presented today at the Radiological Society of North America’s annual meeting, has found that strong brands elicit strong activity in our brains.

A new ultrasound technique allows radiologists to distinguish benign from malignant breast lesions. Using elasticity imaging, researchers correctly identified both cancerous and harmless lesions in nearly all of the cases studied. The findings were presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America.

Elasticity imaging is a modification of a routine ultrasound exam, like a manual self-exam, but more sensitive. The noninvasive technique works by gauging how much tissue moves when pushed, and it can detect how soft or stiff an object is.

Agfa Healthcare's new DX-Si made its North American debut this week at the Radiological Society of North America annual meeting. Agfa is calling the unit a cost-effective integrated digital radiography solution.

DX-Si offers high image quality at reduced patient X-ray dose, along with flexibility and versatility, the company said. The new product combines Agfa’s DX-S digital radiography system with an X-ray modality.

The DX-Si is being marketed to high-throughput general radiography rooms, ERs and Paediatric environments. It is pending FDA clearance.

Radiologists have developed a remote-control mechanism that allows an experienced off-site operator to control an MRI machine by logging onto the Internet from a personal computer. The quality of the images from remote-control scanning was found to be superior to images obtained by a less-experienced technologist onsite.

Toshiba America Medical Systems Inc. showcased the first floor-mounted, multi-axis, bi-plane vascular X-ray system at the Radiological Society of North America’s annual meeting in Chicago this week. The Infinix VFi/BP has a 12- by 16-inch flat-panel detector that allows unprecedented clinician access and anatomical coverage of the patient, the company said.

Eizo Nanao Corp. introduced the largest monitor in its RadiForce series, the 30-inch RadiForce RS410, which boasts a screen size and native resolution of 4 megapixels and a 16:10 widescreen format — equal to a pair of 2-megapixel monitors in portrait mode, but without the bezels.

GE Healthcare's portable Logiq P5 includes advanced applications and mid-sized maneuverability for facilities with space constraints. Like previous Logiq products, the P5 offers high-definition speckle reduction imaging, CrossXBeam spatial compounding and 4D imaging. P5 is relatively small and light, making it an attractive option for functionality in tight areas.

Agfa HealthCare's CR 30-X is a tabletop computed radiography solution. The compact digitizer offers comparable efficiency and image quality that users expect in full floor-size models, the company said.

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