A new Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute study found non-physician practitioners’ (NPPs) share of imaging interpretation in office-based practices increased 117%, from 2.52% of Medicare imaging studies in 2013 to 5.47% in 2022. Interpretations by NPPs are performed by a small minority (5.55%) of NPPs with considerable variation by imaging modality and state.
According to new research from the Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute, radiologists who teach residents are spending significantly less time each year in that teaching role. The study, published today in the Journal of The American College of Radiology, tracked the workload of 35,595 radiologists in Medicare Part B claims data from 2008 to 2020. As a percentage of total clinical workload measured in relative value units, work that involved resident training dropped from 35.3% in 2008 to 26.3% in 2019. In 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the U.S., the teaching share of work dropped further to 24.5%.
A new Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute study found that neurointerventionalists, who often deliver lifesaving and disability-sparing treatments for emergency stroke cases, have essentially no financially viable access to payment recovery through the No Surprises Act (NSA) for professional mechanical thrombectomy (MT) out-of-network (OON) claims.
A new Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute (HPI) study found that living in a neighborhood with higher vulnerability to environmental heat predicted worse stroke severity. Investigators from HPI’s PRIME research center at Northwell Health, the largest health system in New York state, evaluated all acute ischemic stroke admissions to Northwell’s comprehensive stroke center over a decade.
A new Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute study found the geographic distance to facilities providing breast MR or ultrasound was more than 2.7 times further than the distance to a mammography center. Given new breast density guidelines, now approximately one in two women (those who have dense breast tissue) are recommended to have supplemental breast cancer screening by breast MR or ultrasound due to their relatively higher breast cancer risk. The research, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, measured distance to the nearest facility offering mammography, breast MR and/or breast ultrasound for 29,629 ZIP codes. The researchers compared distance between imaging types to reveal the relative extent of this barrier to access and to inform approaches to mitigate disparities.
A new study by researchers from Mayo Clinic and the Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute demonstrates the impact on reimbursement of a value-based payment model, the Radiation Oncology Case Rate (ROCR). A bipartisan bill introduced to Congress this May includes ROCR to protect access, reduce disparities and improve outcomes in cancer treatment.
A new Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute study found that radiologists interpreted 72.1% of all imaging studies for Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries in 2022, with the remaining 27.9% performed by other types of clinicians.
The Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute announces the public launch of a new online tool that reveals the overlap between cancer disparities and social determinants of health (SDOH) using advanced heat maps of U.S. counties. The Cancer Equity Compass can identify high-opportunity targets for policies and programs to achieve equitable health outcomes in underserved populations.
A new Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute study found that from 2014 to 2023 the number of medical practices with affiliated radiologists decreased 14.7% even though the number of radiologists increased 17.3%. As such, the average number of radiologists per practice increased from 9.7 to 17.9 over the study.
A new Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute study found that physician reimbursement per Medicare patient decreased 2.3% between 2005 and 2021 when accounting for inflation, despite a concurrent increase of 45.5% in physician services to each patient. These reimbursement trends varied widely by physician specialty (-57.6% for cardiac surgery to +189.1% for pain management).
A new study by researchers at NYU Langone Health, Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute found lower rates of osteoporosis screening among Asian American (15%) and other non-white Medicare beneficiaries (11-15%) in the U.S. when compared with the screening rate among white beneficiaries (18%).
The latest Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute (HPI) study shows that radiologists in radiology-only practices score significantly lower in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) in 2021.
New research demonstrates that the use of CT angiography (CTA) for patients with headache or dizziness increased dramatically over 5 years in the emergency department (ED) of a large medical center. Simultaneously the rate of positive findings on those same exams decreased.
Medical imaging has previously been identified as a potential driver of U.S. healthcare spending growth. A study by the Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute evaluated the degree to which imaging has contributed to aggregate medical cost growth.
Seventy-six percent of interventional radiologists (IRs) identified using a new research method were mislabeled as diagnostic radiologists in Medicare data, according to the latest study from the Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute (HPI), supported by the Society of Interventional Radiology (SIR).
A new Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute study found that, by 2021, only 1.1% of radiologists’ commercial claims were out of network (OON), down from 12.6% in 2007. As such, by 2021, radiologists practiced almost exclusively in-network. This Journal of the American College of Radiology study was based on 80 million commercial radiology claims (2007-2021) for individuals covered by a large commercial payer.
A new Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute study found that clinicians who dispute insurer payments under the No Surprises Act (NSA) will typically pay fees in excess of recovered payments. Across affected medical specialties, only one-half to two-thirds of out of network (OON) claims would result in any net return if submitted through the NSA’s Independent Dispute Resolution Process (IDR) process, demonstrating this is not a financially viable option to resolve payment disputes. This American Journal of Roentgenology study was based on 1.5 million commercial OON claims (2017-2021) for individuals covered by a large commercial payer and focused on specialties most affected by the NSA: anesthesiology, emergency medicine, hospitalist, intensivist, laboratory, neonatology, pathology, and radiology.
A Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute (HPI) and American College of Radiology® (ACR®) Data Science Institute (DSI) study projects that new U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved artificial intelligence (AI) medical imaging products will increase five-fold by 2035.
The Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute has announced the release of Neiman Almanac 2.0. The Neiman Almanac is an online public resource that provides imaging-focused Medicare data back to 2004, including national and state trends in spending and utilization.