Jack Smith, an executive representative for Specialized Medical Devices Inc., has many positive and influential factors that he can bring to the table for Academic Medical Centers, in regards to the advantages to purchasing a digital mammography with tomosynthesis versus purchasing standard screen-film mammography equipment (Cleverley, Song, & Cleverley, 2011). Academic Medical Center’s CEO, Robert Alexander, has vocalized some reasons as to why he feels that standard screen-film mammography equipment would be a better financial decision for this medical center. Robert Alexander shows concerns of a necessary increase in charges due to the expense of the new digital equipment, the required training time, and the fact that the equivalent …show more content…
Radiology will face many changes over the years and staff will always be required to learn, adjust, and grow with improvements and upgrades to technology in their field. It is part of the radiology staff’s job to become educated in their field and the changes that occur within their field. Jack Smith may benefit from tacking on an educational package, at discounted pricing or maybe even for free, that could be included with the purchase of the new digital equipment. Jack Smith may also want to include a year of technical support assistance from the date of purchase. It will be up to the leadership of the medical center to encourage the staff to take advantage of this opportunity and knowledge that will help the staff to provide their patients with the most current breast cancer screening that is offered. There are many costs that are associated with standard mammogram equipment such as film, developer solutions, fixer solutions, x-ray jackets/envelops, x-ray view boxes, dark room products, etc. including the time for an individual to process the film (Cleverley, Song, & Cleverley, 2011). All of those things should also be taken into consideration before settling for the standard mammogram option. A digital mammography will eliminate the need for all that is listed above. This is because digital means exactly that, digital and no
PCAM, which is part of the University of Pennsylvania Health System, is home to Penn Medicine’s Abramson Cancer Center, radiation oncology, cardiovascular medicine and an outpatient surgical pavilion. Tom has been a radiology technician since 1981. He worked ten years as a staff technologist, in which during that time he received his bachelor’s in business management. Over the next ten to twelve years he assumed a supervisory role before becoming director of radiology at a smaller community hospital. He then completed his MBA at Saint Joseph’s University—go hawks—before finally moving back to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. The reason I chose to conduct a phone interview with Tom was two-fold. One, Tom is the supervisor of a student, Ame Allen, in our class. She proposed the idea and he loved the thought of helping a fellow Saint Joe’s student. Two, I’ll be the first to admit that I know very little about radiology, what it offers—besides being admitted once for a CT scan—and how it operates. I saw this as an opportunity to learn something new, something we have never discussed during the healthcare
Masson conducts a point in her article explaining that some women experience false positive mammograms and treated unnecessarily. She references from the Nordic Cochrane Centre information pamphlet that states “These women will have either a part of their breast or the whole breast removed, and they will often receive radiotherapy, and sometimes chemotherapy” (Masson, 2010). This can harvest a psychological strain on many women and cause increased distress and anxiety. Along with the emotional strain, direct financial costs to health services will be applied due to unnecessary procedures.
Towne Central Memorial Hospital has seen an increase in MRI CAT scans in the last six months. From May to September the MRI Cat scans have increased by 15%. The current MRI CAT scan has failed several times during patient’s
Some other factors of operation to look at are scan times. There will be a significant amount of time saved when using this new piece of technology. As we know, time is money in any business and the amount of time saved will be viable in contributing to more income in other departments. Another point to look at is the enhanced imaging quality. So many times we are losing time and money on poor image results with our current machine. The quality of enhanced
The disadvantage of compression in mammography is that it can cause some discomfort for the client. GE has addressed this by designing the compression paddles with a rounded bucky shape to increase comfort (GE Healthcare 2016). The compression plates of the GE Essential are motorised, but can also be operated manually (GE Healthcare 2016). They have an automatic stop when compression reaches 200 Newtons (Hogg, Kelly and Mercer 2015, 128). The benefits of compression in mammography include: Better spatial resolution as magnification and focal spot blurring is reduced, reduced motion blur, less scattered radiation due to the shorter beam path length, improved image uniformity and less exposure time due to the smaller anatomy (Hogg, Kelly and Mercer 2015, 128). These benefits maximise clinical utilisation by decreasing patient radiation dose and making the pathology easier to detect. Radiation dose is reduced as the reduced beam path length allows lower energy x-rays to be utilised. This means that there is greater subject contrast and pathology buried in glandular tissues can be better visualized, particularly for malignant tissues (Hogg, Kelly and Mercer 2015, 128). Compression is important for efficient image acquisition and the GE Essential features an ergonomic design to allow for
The first opportunity for Texas Health Care Imaging is the business slant with the development towards coordinating computerized imaging and electronic restorative records. The move in the medical services industry is consistently acknowledged to advance toward an electronic restorative record and part of that includes a total digital solution of imaging examinations. U.S. Federal government regulations are forcing the industry towards direct digital imaging solutions by 2017 to maintain current Medicare reimbursement rates. The “Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2016 (American, 2016) will reduce Medicare reimbursement rates by 30% for any non-direct digital radiology imaging. Texas Health Care Imaging arrangements are for the most part
“The ASRT Office of Practice Standards was established in 2004” to set out a guideline for continuing education. Continuing education means to keep up to date on all the new health codes, practices, equipment, and standards for taking care of patients. This in addition, is important for those who are looking into radiography or any other medical field because it teaches them how to correctly and safely treat a patient and execute what his or her job encompasses. With all the new technology coming out these days, I know I would want to know all about it so I can effectively perform my duty to the highest
In the article, Identifying Women with Dense Breasts at High Risk for Interval Cancer, it explains how that there are twenty-one states that passed a law on how women are to notified if they have dense breast and that they also need to be able to discuss supplemental imaging with their doctor. The doctors want to have direct discussions of supplemental imaging by determining which combinations of breast cancer risk and Breast Imaging Reporting and Data System are associated with breast density categories because of the fact that interval cancer rates are so high. By having high density risk can really be scaring, but it also can cause mask tumors and decrease the sensitivity of a mammography which is not good at all. In the twenty-one states that passed the law are the only
Thank you for the informative post. I liked how you compared the costs of chemotherapy treatment for breast cancer versus mammography. Looking at chemotherapy treatment, from an economic point of view. The treatment is costly and is controversial regarding the efficacy of the treatment. The patient's use of chemotherapeutic agents has led to longer treatment times; which resulted in small incremental gains in survival at considerable additional costs (Haywood et al., 2012). Moreover, healthcare decision makers are in a precarious situation. There is great tension between providing the patient, with the best available treatment options. To improve patient outcomes and the budgetary and resource impact of funding the treatments (Haywood et al.,
Despina Kontos, the lab PI of the department of radiology at Penn along with her team, the CBIG (Computational Breast Imaging Group) is working on developing a research program that can assess and identify if a woman is at high risk of developing breast cancer by analyzing the breast density and parenchymal texture from digital breast images. The goal is to incorporate lengthy biomarkers of cancer risk information into better assessment of breast cancer risk for women. Despina believed that technology has helped cancer research in many ways, she said that technology has “made available imaging equipment that allow us to detect cancers at very early stages when they are easier to treat. In addition, technology has provided us with the ability to analyze a
Breast cancer is the second most common cancer among women in the US. About 40,000 women die from breast cancer each year, making it “the second leading cause of cancer death among women” (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, n.d.). The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (2010) requires insurers to “provide coverage for and shall not impose any cost sharing requirements for” preventive services which are “in the current recommendation of the United States Preventive Services Task Force” (USPSTF). Nevertheless, the ACA makes an exception for breast cancer screening by stating that the USPSTF’s recommendation regarding mammogram “shall be considered the most current other than those issued in or around November 2009”. By using this legislative tool, the federal government mandates health insurers to provide coverage for annual or biennial mammograms in women aged 40 and older (US Preventive Services Task Force, 2013).
In an article by Tupper and Holm (2015) a review of literature is performed on the pros and cons of mammography screening. Experts disagree on the usefulness of routine screening and some feel that routine mammograms cause more harm due to over diagnosing. It is estimated that 1 in 6 cancers are over diagnosed by mammograms causing undo harm to the patient who is receiving therapy for a tumor that would never probably bother them. Other experts argue that cancer rates are down due to increased screenings. Tupper and Holm (2015) address arguments on both sides of the controversy along with providing information on how to educate patients so that they can make an informed decision on screening and decreasing risk
One of the main challenges regarding the growing use of medical technology in the United States is the growing costs that go along with these changes. These state of the art machines as well as new drug and biological developments come at huge costs which in turn are partially paid by patients and consumers. This has led to huge increases in the average costs of healthcare (Begay, “Technology” Lecture, 10/31/17).
After careful analysis of numerous studies performed in many countries around the world, I believe that mammography contributes to increased detection of breast cancer but shows no reduction in its mortality rate. The strongest articles that support my stance surround the Canadian National Breast Screening Study (CNBSS), which is a randomized clinical trial started in 1980 which aimed to assess the differences in breast cancer prevalence in two primary groups of women aged 40-59. 89 835 women have participated in this study since its inception. The first group consists of those who underwent breast examinations supplemented with screening mammography (mammography arm, 44 925 women), while the second group only received breast examinations and
cancer. The use of film mammography can be very hard to recognize breast cancer in