OUR PURPOSE

The ABR Foundation
and the ABR are partners
in the image gently Alliance.

At its June, 2008, meeting, the members of the ABR Foundation adopted three goals:

 Goal One

Improve the health of the public through research and educational programs to address national healthcare challenges.

 Goal Two

Convene medical organizations to explore broad, timely topics of public interest related to medical imaging and radiation therapy.

 Goal Three

Engage the public about advantages of accreditation, certification and maintenance of certification in the improvement of healthcare quality, safety and cost effectiveness in medical imaging and radiation therapy.

At that same meeting, the Foundation members approved two initial projects in its work toward achieving those three goals.

Project One: Annual Summit

2010 Summit Preview:
Improving Patient Care through e-Communication in Imaging

The August 2009 summit on "Medical Imaging: Addressing Overutilization in an Era of Healthcare Reform" explored the various causes for overutilization and identified some of the ways these forces can be controlled and changed through collaborative efforts. Potential solutions identified by attendees included:

• Selection of imaging procedure appropriate for patient condition and circumstance by means of radiology order entry systems with decision support
• Improved workflow through information systems that decrease scheduling delays and shorten patient waiting time for procedures
• Individualized patient cumulative dose monitoring
• Encouragement of image-sharing to avoid duplication, reduce cumulative dose and decrease waste
• Communication of critical and/or unexpected findings
• Automated follow-through reminders

Building upon these communication and systems-based solutions, the American Board of Radiology Foundation will sponsor a multidisciplinary national summit meeting, "Improving Patient Care through e-Communication in Imaging," August 5-6, 2010, in Bethesda, Maryland.

The ABR Foundation expects participants from a wide variety of physician, provider, payer, and consumer organizations to join in determining the causes for suboptimal communication in the medical imaging arena. Expected summit outcomes include innovative solutions that leverage new technologies. Through keynote presentations and breakout sessions, the summit will provide a multidisciplinary forum to analyze the factors that currently limit communication among physicians, patients, healthcare institutions, and others regarding imaging procedures:

• Lack of technical knowledge regarding new communication technologies
• Limited availability of communication platforms to meet current and future needs
• Limited time for inter-physician and physician-patient communication
• Apprehension over sharing patient data due to HIPAA concerns
• Bureaucratic red tape and complexity of merging different communication systems

Click here for more information about the 2010 Summit

See a summary of the 2009 Summit.

 Download the 2009 Summit overview in .pdf format.

Project Two: ABRF Series in Professionalism

The Foundation envisions a series in professionalism consisting of a consensus conference, followed by the development of a curriculum in professionalism.

Series planners anticipate augmenting the curriculum with white papers, journal articles, and instructional materials. These efforts will build upon the recent foundational work of other medical specialty boards.

Professionalism is also a potential topic for the Foundation's annual Summit in 2010.