March 8, 2024
Researchers Identify “Hidden” Interventional Radiologists in Data, Expanding Opportunities for Research
Fairfax, VA and Reston, VA – Seventy-six percent of interventional radiologists (IRs) identified using a new research method were mislabeled as diagnostic radiologists in Medicare data, according to the latest study from the Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute (HPI), supported by the Society of Interventional Radiology (SIR). This finding means that IRs are largely unidentifiable in health care claims data, which is widely used for population health and health-services research. “Without a method that provides more complete and accurate inclusion of IRs in research, studies may produce non-generalizable or biased results and conclusions,” stated author C. Matthew Hawkins, MD, Professor, Radiology and Imaging Sciences, Emory University School of Medicine. “This gap hinders researchers’ ability to study the value of interventional radiology in health care at a population scale.”
In the study published this week in the Journal of Vascular and Interventional Radiology, the HPI and IR research team developed and tested a method to identify IRs in claims data, an alternative to the inadequate specialty variable in claims. Their approach was to first find all diagnostic radiologists and IRs in the data, then evaluate each radiologist’s billed clinical work for the percentage requiring interventional radiology fellowship training. Identified IRs were compared with sources of radiologist specialty information, including SIR membership data, to estimate how well the method correctly identified true interventional radiologists, without falsely identifying diagnostic radiologists as IRs.
A statistical validated threshold to maximize IR identification was 10% or more IR work; higher thresholds were also evaluated as options for selecting IRs for research. “When we grouped IRs by their percentage of IR work, we found that a majority of IRs were at each end of the spectrum,” said Elizabeth Y. Rula, PhD, Executive Director, Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute. Approximately one-third of IRs performed 10-20% of their work in IR, and a similar proportion performed 90% or more of their work in IR. The other one-third was distributed across the entire 20-90% range of IR work. At all thresholds tested in the study, IRs were more likely to be male, metropolitan, and earlier in their careers than other radiologists.
Lead author Mikki Waid, PhD, Senior Research Fellow at the Neiman HPI, said, “At a 10% threshold we identified 5,453 unique IRs in 2019, 3.6-times more IRs than would have been identified using the specialty information in the Medicare data. When we tested higher threshold percentages of IR work, 50% and 90%, each resulted in the identification of fewer IRs [2,494 and 1,239, respectively], a higher proportion of which were labeled as an IR in the data, compared to the 10% threshold. Our study provides information that will aid selection of the appropriate threshold for a specific research objective” The primary results from 100% Medicare data, with 32,131 radiologists, were verified using a large national commercial and Medicare Advantage claims database that included 26,270 radiologists. “Both datasets produced similar results, further validating our findings,” explained Dr. Waid.
The researchers also conducted a deeper evaluation of the types of clinical work IRs perform. In the Medicare data, IRs dedicate more time to procedural work, whereas in the commercial and Medicare Advantage dataset, a higher proportion of effort is dedicated to evaluation and management. “The smaller proportion of evaluation and management work billed to Medicare Part B versus private insurers may reflect more complex requirements by Medicare for evaluation and management reimbursement, rather than actual differences in the care delivered to Medicare patients,” explained author Raymond Liu, MD, Vice President, Mass General Brigham Global Advisory. “Medicare has made efforts to simplify these requirements, so future research may find greater parity for IRs between payers.”
“The HPI and SIR joined forces for this research because of the need for methods that improve the generalizability and comparability across claims-based IR studies, and it is our hope that this work leads to growth in research investigating the value of this field of medicine to patients and populations,” said author Laura Findeiss, MD.
To arrange an interview with a spokesperson, contact Nichole Gonzalez at ngay@neimanhpi.org or Elise Grant at EGrant@sirweb.org.
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About the Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute
The Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute is one of the nation’s leading medical imaging socioeconomic research organizations. The Neiman Institute studies the role and value of radiology and radiologists in evolving health care delivery and payment systems and the impact of medical imaging on the cost, quality, safety and efficiency of health care. Visit us at www.neimanhpi.org and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.