Five reasons radiologists should embrace clinical decision support for diagnostic imaging.

46-1440/14/$36. On March 28, 2014, with the Doctors Caucus notably absent from the House chamber and using a somewhat controversial voice vote, the House of Representatives passed yet another patch to Medicare’s sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula. HR 4302, the Protecting Access to Medicare Act of 2014, provides a 12-month patch to the SGR formula and prevents a 24% cut in Medicare reimbursement to physicians and other health care professionals. The Senate passed the same bill by a vote of 65 to 34 on March 31, and after the Senate vote, President Obama signed the bill into law, ending the 133th Congress’s yearlong effort to finally reform the SGR formula. With the $138 billion cost of permanent SGR repeal at a multiyear low, we are all disappointed that there is no permanent reform, but unfortunately, election-year politics prevented Congress from developing a solution that would pay for a permanent fix. On a more positive note, this year’s SGR patch legislation is different from previous iterations because instead of just providing for a clean SGR patch, the bill contains a number of health care policy provisions designed to provide incentives to move our health care system from volume-based care to value-based care. At the urging of the ACR, HR 4302 includes a provision that creates an imaging clinical decision support program in Medicare using appropriate use criteria developed or endorsed by national professional medical specialty societies or other provider-led entities. The program, to be implemented in 2017, effectively prevents Medicare from adopting call-in prior authorization for imaging utilization