Fiscal Year 2023 Top Accomplishments

• ACR^® worked with physician organizations to encourage Congress to scrutinize the administration’s implementation of the No Surprises Act and ensure it adheres to the original intent of Congress — to provide an equal playing field for both providers and insurers in dispute resolutions while taking patients out of the middle.

• ACR continued to advocate for biomedical research funding through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) during the congressional appropriations cycle. Met with leaders at NIH and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to advocate for medical imaging and additional prominence in the president’s Cancer Moonshot initiative.

ACR Center for Research and Innovation™

Reported radiation oncology clinical trial results to advance patient care:

• NRG-RTOG 1112: Showed improved survival for patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma with the addition of stereotactic body radiation therapy to Sorafenib.
• NRG-RTOG 1005: Revealed that women with high-risk, early-stage breast cancer could reduce treatment time with a radiation boost to the surgical cavity concurrently with hypo-fractionated whole breast radiation, following a lumpectomy.
• NRG-RTOG 0631: Found that stereotactic radiotherapy did not improve pain relief for patients with localized vertebral spinal metastases and that conventional external radiotherapy should continue as the standard of care.

• Expanded TMIST and the Contrast-Enhanced Mammography Tomographic Imaging Screening Trial (CMIST) to advance breast screening methodology.
• Launched the Lung Cancer AI project to create an AI-ready dataset from 15,000 lung cancer screening patients.

New IDEAS: Imaging Dementia—Evidence for Amyloid Scanning Study

• Accrued 4,269 participants who self-identified as either Black/African American or Hispanic/Latinx; this underrepresented minority cohort was 40% of total accruals.

Fund for Collaborative Research in Imaging Grant

Provided stimulus funds in the amounts of $200,000 each to promising, novel research projects for potential advancement in the field of radiology:

• Christopher Whitlow, MD, Wake Forest University and Allison Shapiro, PhD, MPH, University of Colorado, for a proof-of-concept study on preclinical imaging biomarkers of Alzheimer’s disease neuropathology in young adults with youth-onset diabetes.
• Sherwin Chan, MD, PhD, and Alain Cuna, MD, The Children’s Mercy Hospital, for a randomized controlled trial of bowel ultrasound for the diagnosis of necrotizing enterocolitis.

ACR National Clinical Imaging Research Registry (ANCIRR)

Supported AI development by collecting real-world data and evidence:

• Engaged in planning for the Breast Imaging Research Registry and Liver Imaging Research Registry.
• Developed registries to demonstrate the benefit of structured reporting for expanding reimbursement. 
• Created datasets of patient clinical data and associated medical images from multiple institutions to study outcomes.

• Increased The Voice of Radiology Blog readership by 46% over the last fiscal year.

• Launched the Alzheimer’s Network for Treatment and Diagnostics (ALZ-NET) website in collaboration with the Alzheimer’s Association to collect clinical data and offer better insight into long-term health outcomes for patients who receive new FDA-approved Alzheimer's drugs and therapies. Received more than 40,000 views and 22,000 engagements in the first seven months. ALZ-NET enrolled 15 active sites and 100 additional sites began the start-up process.

• Top JACR articles included a white paper on incidental findings in the ED and a series on federated learning in medical imaging (Part I and Part II).

• The ACR Radiology Well-Being Program released the Well-Being 360 Report, investigating the state of well-being in radiology and crowdsourced ideas to reduce burnout.

• ACR Informatics worked with ACR leaders, industry, government and the medical community to complete the following initiatives: ACR 2022 Imaging Informatics Summit, Cybersecurity Resource Hub launch and a workshop on safe, effective, reliable and transparent AI.

• The ACR Data Science Institute^® (DSI) engaged with industry, government and the medical community to prepare ACR members for the rapidly evolving healthcare landscape through the ACR-SIIM Data Science Summit: Quantifying the Value of AI: Investment, Costs, Reimbursement and Benefits.

• Initiated ACR Connect, providing expanded local processing capabilities, distributed computation and increased on-site workflow capability for a variety of ACR programs.

• Applied the ACR Cortex learning and assessment platform to support case-based learning and knowledge assessment for DXIT, Case in Point^® and RadExam as well as the ACR Education Center re-launch.

• Developed a new, integrated member management system to consolidate member data across a variety of ACR systems, providing a streamlined, secure platform to improve the member experience with a secure single sign-on that drives self-service.

• Started the ACR^® Engage page for AIRP alumni.

• Initiated the Visiting Faculty Application page on acr.org.

• Increased international course participation for Brazil, Austria, Portugal, Columbia, Canada, Spain, Brazil, Argentina, Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong and Australia/New Zealand.

• Performed a complete overhaul of the case archive system.

• Launched in-person courses after a 2.5-year closure due to the pandemic, complete with new case engine software as well as upgraded workstations and monitors.

• Extended virtual course access from 14 days to one month, allowing participants more time to review content and work through cases.

• The Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) awarded ACR the highest accreditation status — Accreditation With Commendation — for the sixth year in a row, the longest accreditation term offered. 

• Collaborated with ACR commissions to develop educational sessions for the ACR 2023 Annual Meeting, providing more than 1,100 CME credits to several hundred participants. 

• 711 residents and fellows participated in 2021–2022 RLI resident leadership programing, including RLI Resident Milestones, RLI Leadership Essentials, RLI Kickstart Your Career, and RLI Resident and Young Physician Leadership (held in conjunction with the 2021 RLI Summit) programs
  
  
• The RLI Taking the Lead podcast celebrated its four-year anniversary with the release of its 47th episode.

• Delivered the ACR 2023 Annual Meeting to 1,303 in-person registrants and 269 virtual registrants. Participants attended caucus meetings, elections, Council deliberations and the Chapter Leaders Workshop. The meeting also provided programming to young and early career professionals, residents and medical students.

• Awarded four chapter grants to support innovative initiatives at the chapter level.

• 24 chapters received Chapter Recognition Awards for excellence in government relations, meetings/education, membership, quality and safety, and overall excellence.

• 386 medical students participated in the 2023 Medical Student Symposium.

• Awarded the Harvey L. Neiman & Richard Duszak Grants to two groups:
  • Paul Yi, MD, University of Maryland, and Jeremias Sulam, PhD, Johns Hopkins University, for their project on advancing equity in artificial intelligence.
  • Zachary Bercu, MD; Michal Horny, PhD; Hanzhou Li, MD; and John Moon, MD, Emory University, for their project on optimizing interventional radiology pain management.
• Amazon Web Services (AWS) selected the interactive HPI tool, Cancer Equity Atlas, for AWS Health Equity Initiative to achieve equitable health outcomes in underserved populations.
• Developed a new interactive heat map tool for common radiology procedures, comparing reimbursement rates for Medicaid vs. Medicare.
• Selected as the coinvestigator for an RSNA Emerging Issues Grant to increase osteoporosis screening in elderly Asian Americans.
• National news outlets feature two HPI studies:
  • U.S. News and World Report picked up this HPI study, originally posted in JAMA Network Open, about the influence of cost sharing on breast cancer screening follow up imaging.
  • NPR and 280 other news outlets published the JAMA Network Open HPI study, showing that ER imaging by nonphysician providers led to a 5.3% increase in imaging.

• Connected with patients and providers to promote awareness about Ovarian Cancer (September), Breast Cancer Screening (October) and Lung Cancer Screening (November).

• Launched the first Lung Cancer Screening Day, Saturday, Nov. 12, 2022, with the National Lung Cancer Roundtable and Radiology Healthy Equity Coalition. The event encourages medical facilities to allow people access to screenings without having to take a day off work.

• Posted Spanish translations of ACR Appropriateness Criteria on breast imaging and urologic radiology.
• Published a white paper in the JACR^® introducing the ACR Learning Network concept and structure. 
• Developed a new content management system for ACR Practice Parameters & Technical Standards to better serve members through the comment and approval process.

Q&S By the Numbers

Digital Breast Tomosynthesis is now a module and no longer counted as a unit, which is why numbers drop for 2023.