Contact: Michael Bernstein; [email protected]
AETNA U.S. HEALTHCARE BECOMES FIRST NATIONAL MANAGED CARE COMPANY TO REQUIRE AMERICAN COLLEGE OF RADIOLOGY ACCREDITATION FOR ALL PARTICIPATING MRI PROVIDERS
BLUE BELL, PA - November 30, 1998 - Aetna U.S. Healthcare today became the first national managed care organization to announce it will require participating magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) providers to be accredited under the American College of Radiology (ACR) accreditation program, effective Jan. 1, 2000. Under the ACR program, MRI facilities receive three-year accreditation based on qualification of personnel, equipment performance, effectiveness of quality control measures, and quality of clinical images.
"Nearly 100,000 Aetna U.S. Healthcare HMO and QPOS members will have an MRI in 1998. Clearly, taking steps to improve the quality of these studies is a serious concern to us, our members and the doctors who refer our members for care," said Arthur N. Leibowitz, M.D., chief medical officer of Aetna U.S. Healthcare. "After reviewing the ACR's MRI accreditation program - which treats the accreditation process as an educational and process improvement tool for MRI facilities - we felt strongly that we should take a leadership role in encouraging an MRI center's participation in this accreditation program."
Aetna U.S. Healthcare and the ACR have had a long-standing history of working together to focus on quality. In 1991, for example, Aetna U.S. Healthcare began using the ACR's Mammography Accreditation Program as a criteria for participation of mammography centers, 3 years before it was mandated by Federal law.
"Aetna U.S. Healthcare has shown its commitment to quality in the past, so it's no surprise that they were the first national managed care organization to use the new ACR accreditation as a participation criteria for MRI centers," said W. Max Cloud, M.D., chairman of the Board of Chancellors of the American College of Radiology. "We believe that ACR accreditation of MRI centers offers consumers a method to gauge the commitment of the center to meet quality standards."
The ACR's accreditation program is designed to be educational in nature, focusing on primary factors that are believed to impact the quality of the clinical MRI images and the quality of patient care. The facility receiving ACR MRI accreditation is awarded a three-year certificate recognizing its achievement. In addition, the facility receives a peer-review assessment document that discusses accomplishments, defines issues which could be improved, and provides recommendations about the performance of magnetic resonance imaging.
Participating Aetna U.S. Healthcare MRI providers will receive notification of the need for ACR MRI accreditation, and will have a year to undergo the accreditation process. Effective Jan. 1, 2000, Aetna U.S. Healthcare intends to make ACR accreditation a criteria for participation for all MRI providers.
The ACR is a national and international medical association comprised of diagnostic radiologists, radiation oncologists, and medical physicists. The College has more than 31,000 members. Through its standards, accreditation programs and appropriateness criteria, ACR has worked to improve the quality of health care in the United States. ACR's objectives are to advance the science of radiology, improve radiologic services to patients, study the socio-economic aspect of radiologic practice and promote improved continuing medical education for radiologists and allied health care workers.
Aetna U.S. Healthcare is the nation's leading health and related benefits organization, with total health enrollment of nearly 16 million members nationwide. In addition, Aetna U.S. Healthcare provides quality measurement and improvement programs and data analysis for providers and purchasers of health care.
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