As one of the first hospitals in Missouri to be built under the Hill Burton Act of 1946, Madison Medical Center serves the rural communities of Madison County in the southeastern corner of the state. Since 1961, the facility has been the only local hospital that provides accessible, quality healthcare. In 2000, Madison Medical Center gained designation as a Critical Access Hospital licensed for 25 beds.

Emory University radiation oncologists recently launched a program for treating brain tumors with frameless radiosurgery using the Trilogy medical linear accelerator and other image-guidance tools from Varian Medical Systems. This state-of-the-art treatment enables physicians to accurately position and monitor patients during radiation treatment using both optical guidance cameras and cone-beam CT, which obviates the need for a standard rigid headframe.

The new home for Hoag Breast Care Center in Newport Beach, CA, is the Sue and Bill Gross Women’s Pavilion. The Pavilion is a multimillion dollar medical facility dedicated to providing women with the highest quality healthcare services.

The University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics in Madison, WI, is at the forefront of medical research and technology, so it makes sense that the first prototype image-guided IMRT system produced by TomoTherapy Inc. was installed in the same university where the research began over 15 years ago.
Minesh Mehta, M.D., UW professor of Human Oncology, has been a TomoTherapy user since 2001. He has overseen the transition from the world’s first clinical TomoTherapy research system to the upgrade of a production Hi·Art System in 2004.

When St. Mary’s Hospital in Leonardtown, MD, wanted to boost its lagging MRI volume, it went to an extreme. The 105-bed rural hospital became the 100th purchaser of an ONI Medical Systems high-field, high-performance dedicated MRI extremity scanner, relying on it as a cost-effective and practical complement to its seven-year-old whole-body MRI device.

When opening a new imaging outpatient center or expanding and improving on current services and business capabilities, it is hard to imagine an operator can prosper without a Radiology Information System (RIS).

As if RSNA wasn’t big enough, expect it to be even bigger this year. As the scope of radiology widens, so does the category of radiology subspecialties. RSNA 2006 has designed its program to reflect this change, adding to its curriculum important research across multiple radiology subspecialties – cardiac radiology, emergency radiology, neuroradiology, vascular and interventional radiology, breast/mammography, gastrointestinal radiology and genitourinary radiology, to name just a few.

It’s impossible to underestimate or overemphasize the importance of patient safety. Regardless of the latest innovative technology, the ability to protect patients begins and ends with effective, timely and correct communications.

Maintaining the financial health of your radiology practice is key to helping you address the physical health of your patients. After all, if your group practice is ailing financially, no one stands to gain any long-term benefits. Ensuring the ongoing viability of your practice is not always simple, but it need not be burdensome. Like a plan or a scan related to physical health, if you establish a regimen, continually track vital indicators and receive regular checkups, then the financial health of your practice is within reach.


As the saying goes, “if we build it, they will come.” That is, assuming we live in a perfect world made of baseball, hot dogs and apple pie. In today’s competitive climate, a physician cannot afford the risk of following such a credo. A successful practice requires forethought, forward thinking and proactive action to sustain profitable numbers. One cannot adopt a passive stance and assume patients will just flock to your door. Those days are long gone…if they really ever existed.
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