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Radiology Groups’ Workload Measured in Relative Value Units

Research Department, American College of Radiology, 1891 Preston White Drive, Reston, VA 20191-4397, e-mail: jonathans@acr.org

Editor:

As we had intended, readers of our article (1) on radiology groups’ workload measured in relative value units (RVUs) assembled data from their practice for comparison with the statistics in the article. Discussions with groups seeking assistance in making this comparison disclosed that we had perhaps been overly literal in measuring RVUs with physician work RVUs of the 1998 Medicare relative value scale. That scale assigns no RVUs to screening mammography (because Medicare pays a flat fee for this examination), and we accordingly assigned it zero RVUs.

Analytically, it is more useful to assign screening mammography 80% of the RVUs of bilateral diagnostic mammography, as the American College of Radiology proposed when Medicare initiated coverage of screening mammography; however, groups would have to revise their data in this fashion. The accompanying Table constitutes our original table 1 revised in this fashion. In general, this revision increases the mean and median workload for various types of groups and their mean RVUs per procedure by approximately 5%–8%. We replicated the rest of our analysis with the same revision and found that our original conclusions about variability and its causes were unchanged.

REFERENCES

1. Sunshine JH, Burkhardt JH. Radiology groups’ workload in relative value units and factors affecting it. Radiology 2000; 214:815-822.[Abstract/Free Full Text]

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This Article Full Text (PDF) Submit a response Alert me when this article is cited Alert me when eLetters are posted Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Sunshine, J. H. Articles by Burkhardt, J. H. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Sunshine, J. H. Articles by Burkhardt, J. H.