Thursday, January 31, 2008

Certifying Your Self-Referral CT

If you want to legitimatize your self-referral operation, just create a society or a commission. The ICACTL, or the "Intersocietal Commission for the Accreditation of Computed Tomography Laboratories" fills the bill. Their mission statement reads, "The ICACTL is dedicated to promoting quality computed tomography diagnostic testing in the delivery of health care by providing a peer review process of laboratory accreditation." So I guess if they bless an operation, it guarantees quality. Sure it does.

Who sponsors this thing anyway? I don't see any radiology societies in there:
Acquiring this blessing is pretty cheap, only $2500 for a main site, and $1000 for each additional scanner per lab. I'm going to buy a used scanner and put it in my garage, and pay my $2500 so I can be accredited too!

Oh, guess what? There is also a sister operation, ICAMRL, the Intersocietal Commission for the Accreditation of Magnetic Resonance Laboratories. Why can't we just be honest and create the ICARMFPW, the Intersocietal Commission for the Authorization of Removal of Money From Patients' Wallets?

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Don't knock these organization. Their standards are actually tougher than the radiology accreditation standards. The radiologists were in years ago but then left because of the turf battle between them and the specialist-based doctors. If you want to write an article about this, try comparing the actual accreditation process.