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Table of Contents
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| Letter from the Editor |
All of us here at the FRS hope you had a restful and fun-filled Thanksgiving and wish you the best for the upcoming holidays. It is not just the holiday season, however, but also the New Year and the deadline for the ACR Annual Meeting resolutions. The resolution deadline is 1/24/22 if you wish to submit one. Guidance on writing a resolution can be found here: Click Here. There are a couple of resolutions of which we already have knowledge. As an FRS member you should have received an electronic SurveyMonkey poll to gauge your opinion on a resolution with regard to paid family leave, sponsored by the American Association for Women in Radiology (AAWR) and co-sponsored by the Utah and Kentucky state chapters. The “Be It Resolved” section: “That the American College of Radiology (ACR) recommend that diagnostic radiology, interventional radiology, radiation oncology and nuclear medicine practices, departments and training programs strive to provide 12 weeks of paid family/medical leave in a 12-month period for its attending and trainee physicians as needed.” The survey is available here https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/9DSLKH3 and the deadline to respond is Thursday, December 16th. Survey results will be distributed in the January 2022 e-Brief. Another resolution is Resolution 1 from last year’s annual meeting, which was referred back to the Board of Chancellors / Council Steering Committee (CSC). In short, the Resolution seeks to streamline the approval process for ACR Practice Parameters and Technical Standards. At the Annual Meeting, much time is spent wordsmithing technical standards and practice parameters, taking time and attention away from broader “House of Radiology” issues and policies, and so Resolution 1 suggested presenting at the annual meeting only the TS/PP with non-unanimous approval by the CSC. Unanimously approved TS/PP would not be presented at the Annual Meeting. Currently, the TS/PP spend hundreds of hours with ACR staff and physician authors and then go through a field review comment process, then undergoing final changes made in a short amount of time at the meeting “on the fly”. ACR members rightly feel they should have an opportunity to perform a final check on the work product of the ACR TS/PP; the Annual Meeting currently is that forum. The ACR CSC workgroup involved in discussing Resolution 1 is looking to provide additional feedback opportunities to engage members in the process, but potentially separate from the annual meeting. In this way, more time could be devoted to hearing audience comments and questions about TS/PP, and more time would be available for appropriate incorporation of those edits. An ACR Town Hall is being held to understand member perspectives on Resolution 1. It is coming up shortly – Thursday, December 9th — so please register if you are interested: Click Here If you love to come to the microphone and make edits to the TS/PP and want to keep that at the annual meeting, please attend! If you want to streamline the TS/PP to a separate track and re-focus the annual meeting on radiology policy, please attend! The ACR would like to hear your opinion on the issue. As a reminder, the ACR Annual Meeting for 2022 was moved from early May to late April (April 24-28), and it now spans 5 days instead of 4. The venue has also changed back to the Hilton Washington just north of Dupont Circle. Registration here: Click Here. Best wishes to you, your colleagues, and all your loved ones for this holiday season. Thank you for allowing us to serve you in 2021. We look forward to an even brighter 2022.
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Juan Batlle, MD
Secretary, FRS
juancarlos98@gmail.com |
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| Meet Your 2021 – 2022 FRS Executive Committee |
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President
Rajendra Kedar, MD, FACR |
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President Elect
Chintan Desai, MD, FACR
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Treasurer
Laura Vallow, MD |
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Secretary
Juan Batlle, MD |
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| FRS President’s Message |
Congratulations Jeffrey Stone, MD, FACR
First of all, I want to congratulate our own past president, Dr. Jeffrey Stone for featuring in the ACR Bulletin! In State Talk, he discusses how important chapter involvement is to the radiology community. I encourage you to read his interview. Click Here.
FRS Social Media
We now have social media accounts with Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Please join and follow our pages. For social media posts, please contact us. We have links on our website, as well as, in the Ebrief.
Join the Opportunity to Serve on ACR Committees
ACR’s College Nominating Committee (CNC) has called for nominations for an opportunity to play a key role in leadership and governance for positions on the Board of Chancellors, Council Steering Committee, CNC and more. Your participation and representation will empower you and the FRS to make your voice — and your fellow FRS members’ voices heard and will offer you an opportunity to directly impact our future. Last date to fill nominations is Dec 8th. If you are interested and if we can help you anyway, please let us know. The opportunities are:
- Board of Chancellors (BOC) vacancies
- President (elected 1-year term)
- Vice President (elected 1-year term)
- YPS Position (elected 2-year term)
- Chair, Commission on General, Small, Emergency and Rural Practices (elected 3-year term)
- Chair, Commission on Radiation Oncology (elected 3-year term)
- Chair, Commission for Women and Diversity (elected 3-year term)
- Member-At-Large (elected 3-year term)
- Council Steering Committee (elected 2-year term)
- College Nominating Committee (elected 2-year term)
- Intersociety Summer Conference – Private Practice (selected 2-year term)
Value Based Health Care in Radiology
The COVID-19 pandemic has heightened the need for quality healthcare at an affordable cost and access to all. Radiology plays a critical role in advancing quality care at an affordable cost for disease detection, management, therapy, monitoring and prevention. We understand our role to provide specialized expertise to patients, referring physicians, and the community.
To achieve these goals, the impact of radiology services on patient outcomes and quality of life will dominate the dialogue about legacy and novel current and future technologies for imaging and image guided therapies. Diagnostic and technical efficacy will dominate diagnostic and therapeutic impact, patient outcome, and socio-economic benefits. Radiologists are champions for health equity and are recognized for democratizing our services while embracing innovation that brings imaging advances to the population at large. Personalized imaging care integrates diagnostic data from all sources and leverages predictive analytics to anticipate and remedy future in health and well-being.
Owing to the relatively high cost of radiology services and rapidly rising health care costs, we must develop methods to ensure that imaging and image guided therapy services are used appropriately based on evidence-based guidelines. Tools that will help us to uniformly adopt these is by automation/ semi-automation with AI. Adoption and use of the tools necessary to achieve these goals must be embraced by all members of the medical community, especially those who interact with patients primarily and direct their care.
Ref: Plenary Session: Radiology in the Value-Based Healthcare Arena: Player or Pawn? RSNA 2021 JA Brink |
Very Respectfully,
Raj Kedar, MD, FACR
President, Florida Radiological Society
Professor of Radiology, University of South Florida – Morsani College of Medicine
Director- Body Imaging Education and Fellowship
Chief -Dept of Radiology, Tampa General Hospital |
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Past President
Douglas Hornsby, MD
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Legal Counsel
Michael M. Raskin, M.D., J.D., FACR |
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| FRBMA President’s Message |
2021 Year-end Review
As I wrap up 2021, I reviewed our business and tried to assess what this might tell us about 2022. Since the pandemic there have been changes that may last well beyond the pandemic. Some of these changes were brought on by the pandemic and some are tied to national trends. Here is my analysis and commentary.
Business Volume
Our company started the year slightly below 2019 volumes and we are ending the year above 2019 volume. We had about a 10% drop in volume in late July through August in what appears to be a reaction to the DELTA variant. We quickly recovered in September with record volumes in most areas of our business. We saw significant increase in volume in mammography and our third shift ER volumes. Healthcare demand is reliable and predictable and the demand for healthcare services is likely to grow just based on the national demographics of our population.
Staffing Shortages
This has been a significant issue for our group. In general, the number of people willing to work has declined and employees that are not clinical (schedulers, front desk etc.) are, at least to some degree, leaving healthcare to work in a different field. Turnover of clerical staff has been twice as high as what we have seen in previous years. In an effort to retain workers, we increased wages as our rates from just a year ago were no longer competitive. At a minimum, employees will be expecting a current year increase similar to the current inflation rate (6%).
Staff Morale
It has gotten a lot harder to work in healthcare since the pandemic. There is such a divide to how people think about masks, vaccinations and anything related to the political climate. You have probably seen how people are acting on planes when they are forced to wear masks and then create a scene. Well, that same thing plays out in our office almost every day when patients refuse to wear masks but also refuse to leave the building. Patients and employees have become very animated about their point of view and have little or no tolerance for contrary points of view. I have no solutions for this issue and just deal with the outcomes when issues occur.
Physician Recruiting
This has been one of the bright spots of 2021. Several years back, the high starting pay and the lifestyle benefits that the corporate radiology organizations offered was strong competition for our group. In the last couple years, it appears that a private practice partner track opportunity is in favor again. I don’t think we can take anything for granted. Private practice may be the best option but messaging that to candidates is how we win that debate.
Reimbursement
As things stand now, we can expect that CMS will decrease in radiology reimbursement by 1% and decrease in interventional reimbursement by 5%. This is lower than initially proposed; but, this estimate presumes that the 3.75% favorable adjustment to the CY 2021 conversion factor from the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021 is renewed for 2022. If that does not occur then the declines in reimbursement will be greater than those estimated above.
We also had a similar downward reduction at two of our commercial payers this this year.
Cyber Security
Cyber security insurance is getting more difficult to obtain. In our renewal process we found that insurers are now requiring companies to meet minimum security standards to qualify. I believe this trend will continue particularly in healthcare as it one of the top targets for cyber threats. Costs are increasing significantly given the increased levels of risks.
2022 Forecast Expectations
Patients will continue to moderate their use of healthcare services during higher risk situations but will more quickly return to normal as the risks subside. Reimbursement is likely to see downward pressures in the next insurer renewal cycle.
Expect continued labor shortages and higher levels of turnover. This will impact the service levels as staffing will generally be less experienced. Do all you can to retain your skilled staff and consider developing detailed training manuals or videos to accelerate the new staff learning curve. Keep detailed records of causes for turnover and rejected offers so that you can assess whether your wages are competitive.
Employee morale will continue to be strained given the politics surrounding healthcare. Leadership should try and maintain a neutral stance and mediate when needed to solve employee conflicts. Work to develop a safe work place. Consider more flexible employment options including remote options.
Recruiting is very much market dependent but private practice is more in favor than it was a few years ago. Candidates do not want to join a practice that is sold just after they join. Give candidates your commitment and reasoning as to why you plan to remain private. Consider including beneficial language in new partner track contracts that allows them to participate in a sale in the unlikely event the group is sold. This should be an easy accommodation if you’re not intending to sell.
Stay on top of your cyber security. . If you have a renewal in 2022, contact your insurer at least 6 months in advance to see if you need any system or security enhancements for your new policy
It’s a reasonable expectation that partner income may drop in the next few years due to rising costs in several areas and declining per unit revenue. Maintain your market share by retaining your staff and providing great service even if it is at the expense profits. |
John Detelich, CPA, MBA, CEO
President, FRBMA
jdetelich@radassociates.com |
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| Legislative Update |
The final committee meeting before Session starts on January 11th has just concluded on December 2nd. The session is taking shape and more proposed legislation is moving and hitting the system.
Earlier in the year, the Legislature passed legislation to protect health care providers from Covid- 19 liability and potential lawsuits related to the pandemic. That law expires in March of 2022. This week, the Senate introduced and passed out of Senate Judiciary, SB 7014, that would extend the current protections until June 1, 2023 allowing for an additional 14 months of protections after the current statutory protections are to expire.
Recently, SB 1052, has been filed by Senator Lori Berman. The bill would prohibit health insurance companies and maintenance contracts that provide mammogram, breast imaging and breast ultrasound coverage from charging higher co-payments for follow-up exams than they did for the initial test that prompted a health care provider to recommend further testing.
The reapportionment maps are beginning to be released and folks are starting to see where their new districts will be.
The Governor will be releasing his proposed budget this month.
I would like to wish everyone a healthy and happy holiday season. |
All my best,
Alison Dudley, FRS Lobbyist
AlisonDudley@dudleyandassociates.com |
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| Job Posting Opportunities |
Florida Radiological Society is pleased to introduce the opportunity for interested parties to advertise for potential jobs in our monthly FRS Ebrief bulletin.
Advertisement pricing is as follows:
Ebrief Job Posting pricing:
3 months ($100 monthly)
6 months ($90 monthly)
12 months ($80 monthly)
Please contact Lorraine Roger, our Society Administrator for further information on how to advertise in our monthly publication.
Phone: (813) 806-1070
Fax: (813) 806-1071
Email: lroger@flrad.org
We feel that this will provide a valuable service to both our members and our Florida community of Radiology.
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Thank you for your interest!
Patricia Mergo, MD |
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| Become a PAC Member Today |
Attention FRBMA Members! Please support the cause. We encourage you to be PAC members and supporters; you do not have to belong to the FRS. Donations can be made online through our PAC website www.FLRADPAC.org. Thank you for your donation: Dr. Mergo
It is critical that we support both our Florida PAC and RADPAC in order to bolster our voice in Tallahassee and Washington, respectively. Please join FRS lobbyist Alison Dudley in her special appeal for all Florida radiologists to become Florida PAC members. If you would like to help FRS defend radiology against untoward legislation and introduce bills that have a positive impact on our practices, we need your financial support to re-elect our friends in the state House and Senate. The FRS can also show you simplified ways on how to sign up your radiology group. Contact Lorraine Roger at lroger@flrad.org or contact Alison Dudley at alisondudley@dudleyandassociates.com for more information. |
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Telephone (813) 806-1070 • Fax (813) 806-1071
5620 W. Sligh Avenue • Tampa, Florida 33634
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| The E-Brief is an exclusive member benefit of Florida Radiological Society, delivering monthly member, chapter and industry news. Please do not reply to this automatic e-mail. For comments or questions about the E-Brief, please contact lroger@flrad.org. |
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