by
Loren Bonner, DOTmed News Online Editor | May 01, 2013
From the May 2013 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
Many of you probably don't know this, but my grandfather was a radiologist. He practiced up until the day he died, reading X-rays from his hospital bed at Good Samaritan Hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio. That was the late 1990s.
He practiced in what was considered the heyday for the profession, during the advent of MRI and CT scans when radiologists were reimbursed handsomely under the fee-for-service model. Things began changing for radiologists in the early aughts when Congress enacted laws aimed at reducing Medicare reimbursements for imaging services. And of course, we continue to hear the rhetoric from industry stakeholders about the downward pressure from Congress on imaging.
But President Obama's health care reform law of 2010 seems to be taking the biggest toll on the profession with its emphasis on primary care. Although I've been aware of this all along, it really hit home when I heard that a New York hospital, St. Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx, had recently shuttered its radiology residency program to instead fund new residencies in primary care, leaving roughly a dozen radiology residents to fend for themselves.
Because the Affordable Care Act will insure many more Americans, there's a great need to train more primary care doctors - already in short numbers in this country - and drive them into the specialty. The bill includes several incentives and ways to grow primary care. As one radiology professor told me months ago: "That's not a secret. It's clearly in the bill - putting more money in the hands of primary care."
Maybe it's not all doom and gloom for the profession. I know there are several professionals and groups figuring out ways to get radiology to lead some of these changes. But more than anything, I wish I could hear my grandfather's thoughts about how his profession has changed. He would be 96, and I guarantee that he would still be reading X-rays.
