Education, Networking, and Fun

By Tamara Scott

The San Francisco Bay Area’s first local area meeting was held on Monday, May 5, 2014 at the beautiful UCSF Mission Bay campus in their award-winning William J. Rutter Conference Center, an eco-friendly, green establishment that utilizes novel composting processes and serves organic foods. Approximately 50 attendees came from all ends of the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. Imaging was well represented from Walnut Creek, to Monterey, to Ukiah, to Roseville to hear an exciting half day of presentations.

The meeting opened with UCSF’s Spencer Behr, MD presenting new advances in PET/MR. Following Dr. Behr, The Advisory Board’s Shaun Lillard discussed how to maximize imaging revenue capture and imaging pricing strategies. He provided a thoughtful and insightful presentation on pricing for diagnostic imaging and the future. During his presentation, he gave us tools to ask ourselves about price sensitivity in our market.

Next, Hologic’s Clay Callender provided an update on mammography coding, as there have been many changes due to the CMS decision and process on coding. He also told the group that CPT coding is coming for breast tomosynthesis. For the final presentation of the day, Kevin Brode from Hitachi Data Systems discussed challenges of data storage and featured Hitachi’s new Clinical Data Repository. We were also honored to be joined by a special guest, AHRA’s very own Ed Cronin, who shared with us the future directions of AHRA and benefits of membership.

After a delicious, organic lunch generously hosted by Hitachi and Ascendian, and a break to enjoy some of that special California sunshine, the group donned hard hats, jeans, and goggles and headed across campus for a tour of the new UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital, scheduled to open in February 2015. Though the radiology floor was still under major construction, we were able to view some of the completed floors that included patient rooms, interventional OR’s, rooftop gardens, and spectacular artwork. You can already feel UCSF Medical Center’s vision for the sustainability and green design of new hospitals. It’s a vision that entails the creation of a healthful environment within the buildings for both the healing of patients and the well-being of visitors and staff.

The day struck a perfect balance of education, networking, and fun. We made lots of new friends and are planning to hold another meeting in the fall.

Special thanks to our sponsors, Valerie Kodzoman from Hitachi and Hjalmer Danielson from Ascendian, for making this day possible; AHRA’s Jillian Nanof for patiently guiding us through this process; and my conference co-host and partner in crime, Linda Womack, CRA, Executive Director at John Muir Hospital.

Looking forward to seeing you all in DC!

Tamara Scott is the practice manager at University of California-China Basin in San Francisco, CA. She can be reached at tamara.scott@ucsfmedctr.org.