The adoption of Guidelines may grandfather the nation's 7,000 to 10,000 existing MRI facilities so they don't need to be brought up to the new standards. However, operators of current sites will still need to be concerned if their facilities are not up to par.

"It will reinforce the legal standard to which providers will be held--not necessarily the licensure or accreditation standard," Gilk suggested.


What's more, CMS is requiring advanced imaging providers to be specially accredited in order to receive reimbursement starting in 2012. Since the Joint Commission, one of three CMS-approved accrediting bodies, must adopt modality-specific quality and safety accreditation standards, it's reasonable that Guidelines, which is based on ACR recommendations, will inform commission standards if not be adopted outright.

"It would not surprise me to see that the Guidelines MRI safety criteria really wind up getting adopted as some of these new accreditation standards, even before they're adopted for the general accreditation programs, because these new programs are going to be moving at lightning speed in the next year as we gear up and prepare for the 2012 CMS requirements."

Guidelines is published by the Facility Guidelines Institute: www.fgiguidelines.org .

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