Annual Oration in Diagnostic Radiology Presented Today

Strategies for Radiology to Thrive in the Value Era

Kruskal

In the current value-driven population healthcare environment, radiology must play a key role in both understanding and defining value for providers and their patients.

Yet radiology faces challenges in defining the term "value" in the context of medical imaging and finding metrics with relevance to both the patient and the radiologist, said Jonathan B. Kruskal, MD, PhD, who will present today's Annual Oration in Diagnostic Radiology, "Strategies for Radiology to Thrive in the Value Era."

As an essential first step, radiology must create a roadmap for providing the evidence-based, outcomes-focused, appropriate and effective clinical care that each patient deserves, he said.

"To thrive in the world that only rewards value contributions, we need to reassess and reorganize our roles in effectively managing health imaging information and become realistic about how we currently measure and manage our performance in healthcare delivery," Dr. Kruskal said.

Dr. Kruskal received his medical degrees (MB, ChB) from the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa in 1982. After completing an internship in medicine and surgery at Groote Schuur Hospital, he joined the South African Liver Research Center at UCT as a research scholar, where he earned a PhD degree in hepatic molecular physiology and developed an assay for the newly identified protein D-dimer. After a post-doctoral fellowship at Vanderbilt University, Dr. Kruskal completed his radiology residency at Harvard Medical School's New England Deaconess Hospital in Boston in 1994.

With the support of a 1998 GE Healthcare/RSNA Research Scholar Grant, Dr. Kruskal developed intravital optical methodology for imaging gene expression, angiogenesis and metastatic pathways in a solid tumor mouse model.

Dr. Kruskal joined the faculty specializing in abdominal imaging, and in 2001, he was appointed chief of abdominal imaging, then rose to radiology chair at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School in 2008, positions he still holds today.

As an expert on quality improvement in medical imaging, Dr. Kruskal serves as deputy editor of RadioGraphics, editing the Practice, Policy and Quality Initiatives section.