Mobile health screening model lowers costs, promotes sustainability

A new cancer screening service model developed by Italian researchers can reduce direct non-medical costs and improve environmental sustainability for breast cancer screening and other screening exams. The investigators, led by doctoral candidate Vera Benedetto from the Health Science Interdisciplinary Center in Pisa, found that their model, which utilizes mobile cancer screening for breast, cervical, and colorectal cancer, reduced costs by over 95,000 euros ($101,155 U.S.) in terms of travel costs and productivity losses. It also reduced as much as 35 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2)-equivalent travel emissions for a population of 59,000 Tuscan inhabitants with around 6,000 people involved in a screening program. “The study supports the need to adopt a new planning methodology that considers environmental, social, and financial sustainability jointly in the provision of public health services in rural areas,” Benedetto and colleagues wrote. Sustainability has become an area of exploration for radiology practices to explore. Previous reports indicate that actions such as powering down CT and MRI machines when not in use or setting idle time aside for machines can decrease energy use and costs. However, the researchers pointed out that health planning “still lacks an integrative view about environmental and social sustainability goals.” The team proposed its methodological approach with the goal of ensuring coherence between health, environmental, and social goals in ...
Source: AuntMinnie.com Headlines - Category: Radiology Authors: Tags: Practice Management Source Type: news