The Massachusetts state auditor reported this week that the state’s Medicaid program, MassHealth, “may be losing millions of dollars due to unnecessary advanced imaging services such as MRIs.”

The audit report cited two main reasons for the “unnecessary” expenditures: a lack of state laws or regulations against self-referrals, and a reimbursement rate that’s higher than the federal Medicare reimbursement rate. You … read more »

Women of Mexican origin have specific breast cancer-related needs and should be the focus of targeted prevention and education efforts, according to a study at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

The study, published online this week in the journal Cancer, found that:

Among Mexican-origin women with breast cancer who were surveyed, half were diagnosed before age 50. That’s years … read more »

Fired and then arrested in quick succession last week, a radiologic technologist has been accused of infecting three patients with hepatitis C while stealing drugs during the course of his work at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida.

One of the patients, according to the clinic, died at least partly because of the disease.

Mayo administrators said on Wednesday that they had fired … read more »

Just as medical isotopes from the finally restarted nuclear reactor at Chalk River, Ontario, have begun trickling into the supply pipeline, doctors at a national symposium warned of the possible consequences of the current isotope shortage.

Before it was unexpectedly shut down in May 2009, the Chalk River plant had produced up to a third of the world’s medical isotopes—and half … read more »

In 2001, the University of Michigan Health System began actively seeking out its own medical errors, fully disclosing such errors to patients, and offering compensation when the health system was at fault.

Since that time, lawsuits and new claims for compensation have decreased, claims are being resolved more quickly, and liability costs have gone down. The findings are detailed in a … read more »

Death during a CT scan in Florida resulted last week in a $6.2 million medical malpractice verdict.

An Alachua County (Gainesville) jury found against Shands at the University of Florida hospital in Gainesville. The hospital was expected to appeal.

In December 2002, Jacksonville resident Cory Fine, PhD, a business-school professor at the University of North Florida, underwent gastric-bypass surgery for weight loss … read more »

Is it the economy? Fear of radiation? Loss of health insurance by potential patients? All of the above?

Whatever the cause or causes, this has not been a good year for the high-tech imaging business. The Diagnostic Imaging news service reports that CT and MR imaging volumes are flat or declining across the United States.

The article quotes Tom Cabot, vice president … read more »

A lawsuit seeks $2.5 million in damages from a Virginia medical clinic and three physicians’ assistants who worked there for not diagnosing the breast cancer that killed a woman at age 58.

The Northern Virginia Daily newspaper reports that George Pierce Sr. of Winchester, Virginia, filed suit this week against Amherst Family Practice, also of Winchester. The lawsuit says Amherst provided … read more »

Any institution that does perfusion CT scans of the brain should right this minute check the settings on its machines and the training of its technologists. At least eight hospitals, plus manufacturers, regulators, patients, and, of course, lawyers, are complaining, arguing, investigating, and pointing fingers regarding excessive radiation doses during such scans.

The Los Angeles Times reported this week that, at … read more »

In this calendar, they take it all off—all the way down to the bone.

A German advertising agency promoting a new monitor to German radiologists came up with a maximum-exposure calendar. It features 12 full-body X-rays of women in sultry pinup poses.

Okay, before we go any further, we know what you want. Here they are, Miss January through Miss December.

The Local, … read more »