by
Lisa Chamoff, Contributing Reporter | October 13, 2015
From the October 2015 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
Pua says his facility did look into offering free screenings, but struggled to decide how to address the 20 to 30 percent of patients who end up having a positive study. “Who pays for the follow up?” Pua says. “Again, in thinking about protecting patients down the road, it’s kind of hard to put that burden on people.” Uncertainty aside, radiologists agree that lung cancer screening programs will have a big impact on the industry. “It’s going to have a tremendous impact on the field of radiology because of the number of patients who will be scanned,” McKee says.
It’s also pushed manufacturers to release new products. In August, GE Healthcare received FDA clearance for a lung cancer screening option for low-dose CT. The product, which is available on all of GE’s new 64-slice and greater scanners and most of its 16-slice scanners, includes GE’s new low-dose screening reference protocols, which are based on patient size and current screening recommendations.
Ken Denison, GE’s global marketing director for CT products, is cautiously optimistic about what the CMS decision means for the industry, with a potential for eight million patients with a history of smoking to be scanned.
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“If, overnight, all eight million showed up to get an annual CT, that would be an increase of 10 percent of CT scans done in the U.S.,” Denison says. “As with anything in health care, the adoption rate is always hard to predict and it’s always lower than you expect.” With the requirements in place, programs are challenging to run. “It’s not as easy as putting out a sign saying, ‘Get your CT lung cancer screenings today,’ ” Denison says. “If health care providers get the word out and get their programs in place, we might see an increase of a couple of million scans a year.”
Siemens RV with
SOMATOM Scope
CT System
Judith Schmalzing, CT installed base product manager at Siemens Healthcare, says the company’s new SOMATOM Scope, a diagnostic CT scanner with a footprint that is small enough to fit inside a mobile imaging vehicle that doesn’t require a commercial license to operate, creates the potential for conducting lung cancer screening in remote areas.
