Radiosurgery for the Entire Body Reaches Birmingham Swaid Brings CyberKnife to Birmingham "It is just a matter of letting physicians know that it is now available," says Swaid N. Swaid, MD, the neurosurgeon behind bringing a Cyberknife System to the area and Medical Director for the new facility. "Many of them already know the advantages it brings to their patients, but now it's here." JANE EHRHARDT

New Ultrasound for Sports Medicine and Beyond Imagine being able to perform an ultrasound on a patient anywhere, including the site where the injury occurred. The new GE Logic E ultrasound allows doctors to do that and more, and the physicians at Lemak Sports medicine have been using the new ultrasound technology in their offices since March with excellent results. LORI K. DITORO

UAB using Southeast's first high definition, low-dose CT imaging system Last fall, physicians with the Kirklin Clinic at UAB began using the Discovery CT750 HD from GE Healthcare. According to Reginald Munden, MD, Professor and Chairman of Radiology at UAB, "it will be used for everything we do with a CT scanner. The big thing, in which we are most excited, is that it reduces the radiation exposure to our patients." The machine reduces the radiation to between 30% and 50% of that received from traditional scanners. LORI K. DITORO

Increase Revenues by Using Electronic Prescribing If your medical practice has not yet implemented electronic prescribing, you are among about 70 percent of physicians in the nation. You also may be missing out on free money. ANN B. DEBELLIS

Tips for Maximizing Your Reimbursement On average, medical practices are underpaid 15 to 25 percent of their revenues, which can mean an annual shortfall of thousands of dollars per physician. By implementing policies to track reimbursements, you can increase revenues that you may have been missing. Billing specialists have a number of ideas in this regard. ANN B. DEBELLIS

Putting Teamwork Into Practice One of the world's busiest thoracic surgeons keeps coming up with new moves to help his patients. You might say Robert Cerfolio, MD is in a league by himself—but he'd be the first to tell you he doesn't do it alone. While most thoracic surgeons average around 200 procedures a year, and probably less than one percent do more than 500, this surgery professor and Chief of Thoracic Surgery at UAB is doing 1,200 surgeries a year with the help of his surgical team.

New Medicare Enrollment Rules Effective April 1, 2009, physicians and nonphysician practitioners ("NPP") must comply with new requirements for Medicare enrollment, re-enrollment and retroactive billing, as well as shorter time-frames in which to notify CMS of changes in certain practice information. Failure to comply can create "gaps" in a physician's or NPP's ability to bill Medicare when moving from one practice to another or to a new practice location, and can result in exclusion from the Medicare program for failing to report certain information in a timely manner. HOWARD E. BOGART