Your Guide to Medical Imaging Equipment

Any time your facility purchases X-ray equipment, there are some big, important steps that need to be taken before it gets installed. Some of these are necessary to get you compliant with regulations in your area, some are needed to insure patient and tech safety, and others simply save you time, hassle, and money by making sure your X-ray room is ready to receive your new equipment as soon as it arrives.

Below, we'll help you learn what to expect from the X-ray compliance process, as well as from the room preparation process, namely which responsibilities are commonly held by an X-ray provider and which are likely to fall to you and your team.

Subscription services are nothing new. In fact, pretty much everyone in any developed country has at least one or two. From Netflix to municipal services like trash collection, people all over the world sign up for services that provide them with the use of something they don't necessarily intend to own- like a server filled with thousands of movies or a garbage truck. Now, DR panel providers are applying that same model to digitizing your analog X-ray equipment. Imagine: your facility can make use of a fully-covered DR panel without making a lump sum capital expenditure. Intriguing? We think so.

While outright purchase of a DR panel may still be the best choice for some, we’re going to share with you the top three reasons we recommend anyone shopping the DR panel market to consider a panel subscription program. We can't speak for every subscription provider out there, so we'll use our program terms as examples along the way.

Many of our readers, friends, and contacts across the imaging field heard early on in 2016 that CMS was implementing reimbursement cuts to film processing in 2017. The result was a flood of requests from people looking to update their equipment stables ahead of the cuts. Many of them are sensed an even deeper turn in the direction of digital imaging and inquired after the ongoing viability of CR processing as a solution.

What we've been communicating to all of them for the last 18 months is that the same legislation cutting reimbursements to film (The Consolidated Appropriations Act) will also cut reimbursements to CR processing in 2018 and again in 2023. In light of this additional wave of cuts, we want to share with you exactly what the law says will happen to CR reimbursements as well as how you can calculate your facility's position and form an upgrade plan.

The basic design and functionality of a portable X-ray machine hasn't changed dramatically over the last 20 years. This is precisely why it's so common to find GE AMX machines from 2005, 2000, and even 1995 still being used in hospitals every day.

Even so, digital X-ray is becoming more and more prevalent in fixed systems, leaving radiology directors in search of economical ways to digitize their portable X-ray images without having to line up at the CR reader after each study. What you'll see below are three upgrade options from Block Imaging that make this happen. 

Getting a portable X-ray unit soon? Click here to share your needs & get a quick quote.

The wonders of technology have created a greater peace of mind for many medical offices and hospitals by providing a way to easily, effectively, and safely store and retrieve digital records. Nothing demonstrates this clearer than when a facility experiences an event that damages or destroys imaging and record-keeping equipment. As "set-it-and-forget-it" as backup and recovery technology can seem, these systems still require some proactive treatment.

Whether the event in question is disastrous for a single laptop (dropped on a hard floor) or for dozens of pieces of equipment across a network (flooding in your building's first couple of floors), the following are some industry best practices to help make sure that restoring access to your patient data can be quick and easy, freeing you to respond to the other urgencies that arise in a disaster recovery scenario.