Posts Tagged ‘radiology’

I Love Being Wrong…

Sunday, March 7th, 2010

Alright, I don’t love the fact of being wrong, but my mission is to motivate improvements in MRI safety for patients, staff, and providers. I’m not the least bit interested in having the longest list of ‘I told you so’ moments, and I’m uncomfortable when someone applies the term ‘guru’ to me. I am openly, vocally, critical of organizations when I feel that they haven’t lived up to their obligation to reinforce MRI safety standards, so when one of them does well, I can’t tell you how happy I am to eat my prior words, and today is an example of that…

Click To Read Who Tobias Was Wrong About…

“The Magnetic Elephant In The Room (Or Congressional Hearing Chamber)”

Sunday, February 28th, 2010

Here we sit, on the cusp of mandatory accreditation for ‘Advanced Imaging’ modalities at outpatient providers (these are CT, MRI and PET), and a series of articles on medical radiation exposure splashes across the New York Times.

In nearly concurrent moves, the Joint Commission (JC) unveils their just-developed Advanced Imaging (AI) accreditation program, the FDA is clamoring for new authority to regulate medical device safety (or gearing-up to use authority that it’s been hiding for safe-keeping, that isn’t exactly clear to me), the US Congress whips together a set of hearings on the issue, and, at those hearings,  the American College of Radiology (ACR) recommends that the Feds expand the scope of the AI accreditation requirement to include radiation therapy and to apply the expanded accreditation requirements to hospitals, too.

Whew, that’s a lot of ground covered for radiology in just the last few weeks! Wait a minute… who is that sitting in the backseat? Who has been drug through all of the hullabaloo about radiation exposure and patient safety without once having been considered, individually? MRI, that’s who.

Click To Read About How MRI Should Be Considered…

MRI Design Requirements – Guidelines Dominoes

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

In stark contrast to the speed with which we expect to see medical technology advance, the more bureaucratic process of regulatory or accreditation tends to be more deliberative and… oh heck, I’ll just say it… glacial in its pace to keep up. Every once in a while, however, these efforts ’sling-shot’ forward.

Much to my surprise (and delight), this is happening with the new Guidelines for Design and Construction of Health Care Facilities (or Guidelines, for short). Though the 2010 edition of Guidelines has only been published for about a month (and the publisher has been struggling to catch up on back-ordered copies), two states have already adopted the 2010 edition as their requirements for licensure.

Click To Learn If Your State Is Among The First…

Joint Commission Advanced Imaging Accreditation Includes MRI Safety!

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

A few weeks ago the announcements came down, CMS had ‘deemed’ three organizations to accredit the new classification of Advanced Imaging in order to be eligible for Medicare & Medicaid reimbursement: the American College of Radiology (ACR), the Intersocietal Commission, and the Joint Commission (TJC).

The other two have had modality-specific accreditation programs for years, so what was the TJC going to do? Well, they’ve released their accreditation criteria, and one of the most wonderful surprises is that MRI safety is more prominent than it is in either of the other two ‘imaging’ accrediting bodies!

Click To Learn What’s In The New JCAHO Standard…

MRI Projectile Accidents – One Exemplar

Friday, February 19th, 2010

How to pick just one when there are a number of alarming, tragic, and needless MRI accidents to choose from? Let’s look at one that we can help the reader better imagine, the case of a pair of flying scissors that had to be surgically removed from a technologist’s forehead…

Click For The Rest Of This Story…

Colombini, Codes, Metal Detectors And MRI Safety

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

Go grab yourself a cup of coffee before you continue… this is going to be a long (for me, anyway) rant.

Ready? OK…

Let’s start at the very beginning (“what a very good place to start”). Click To Read The Whole Story…

$2.9 Million Settlement Closes Colombini MRI Death Case

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

This week the settlement documents were released — closing the chapter on the lawsuit that arose from the seminal event in MRI safety, the 2001 oxygen tank fatality of then-six-year-old Michael Colombini.

Click To Learn More About The Accident And Settlement…

Gurney Crashes MRI, Patient Injured, Hospital Fined $50K

Sunday, January 24th, 2010

It is the stuff of fabled oral-histories, often dismissed as MRI urban-legend. The patient is wheeled into the MRI room on a gurney that goes flying toward the scanner. “How on Earth could these accidents happen when we know about these risks,” the skeptics question? Almost never does more than a single fragment of information surface about these sorts of accidents and, without verification, nearly all accounts can be erroneously written-off as fiction. Or, that was until enough pieces fell into place to conclusively document a recent episode… Click Here To Read More About MRI Gurney Accidents…

 
icon for podpress  Woman On Hospital Gurney 'Sandwiched' Against MRI : Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Pent-Up MRI Equipment Demand To Break In 2010?

Monday, January 18th, 2010

In the radiology community, it’s widely known… the economic downturn has eviscerated the equipment manufacturers’ sales of high-dollar imaging tools. The sour economy, coupled with the drastic cuts in MRI and CT reimbursements, in particular, have hit those two modalities hardest. Eighteen months into this economic malaise, are there signs of recovery? Apparently GE Healthcare thinks so…

GE MRI Scanner

Is GE Preparing For The MRI Rebound?

Click For Details On Thawing MRI Markets…

2009 – The MRI Safety Year That Wasn’t

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010

But 2010 holds the promise of reversing course.

Throughout 2009, we saw tantalizing glimpses of potential MRI safety improvements, which repeatedly escaped becoming real. Here are my ‘Top 3′ near-miss opportunities of 2009 to substantially reshape MR safety…