Letter from the President
The ASHNR and Its Partners
One of the major duties of the ASNHR President is to interact
with other imaging societies. This column is designed
to update you on the interactions between the
ASHNR and two other societies, the American Society of
Neuroradiology (ASNR) and the American College of
Radiology (ACR).
The ASHNR’s relationship with the ASNR has grown
exponentially since Bill Dillon served as ASHNR Program
Chair for our first joint meeting in 1993.
After many years of experimentation, our two societies
have developed a template to coordinate educational activities
for the spring ASNR meeting and our meeting each fall.
Each year, the incoming ASHNR Vice President is our representative
on the ASNR Program Committee, responsible
for creating head and neck programming that reflects the
theme set by the ASNR Program Chair and includes topics
from the ASHNR core curriculum. By following this template,
the same person who sets head and neck programming
at each year’s ASNR meeting serves as our Program Chair
that same year. This guarantees complementary, rather than
duplicative, programming.
Coordination of annual educational efforts between the
ASHNR and ASNR is not limited to lectures. Each year,
members of the ASHNR Educational Committee review the
educational exhibits presented at the ASNR annual meeting.
Based on the recommendations of the Committee, the ASHNR Program Chair solicits the “best of the best” of
these exhibits for presentation at our meeting.
No discussion of education in head and neck imaging
would be complete without the topic of Self-Assessment
Modules (SAMs). After receiving invitations from many
imaging societies to be their partner in developing SAMs,
the ASHNR has joined with the ASNR in venturing into this
“brave new world” of Maintenance of Certification. Our
Education Committee Chair, Suresh Mukherji, is the pointperson
for this new effort. As someone who still thinks of
SAM as the main character in the Dr. Suess book Green Eggs
and Ham, I am grateful to Suresh for his efforts.
The ASHNR president is a member of the ASNR
Clinical Practice Committee and the ASNR Executive
Committee. In the latter role, I attended the annual ASNR
retreat this past January. The focus of the retreat was
“Education in Neuroradiology.” During the meeting, the
program requirements for residency education in
Neuroradiology (commonly known as the Diagnostic
Neuroradiology Fellowship) were reviewed and revised prior
to submission to the ACGME (Accreditation Council of
Graduation Medical Education) for re-approval in 2007.
This revision process sparked a wide-ranging discussion
about the changing role of the resident/fellow in a training
program, including the need to redefine resident/fellow exposure in head and neck imaging as number of cases interpreted
rather than number of weeks on a rotation.
One of the immediate benefits of the retreat was the decision
to appoint an ASHNR representative to the ASNR
Education Committee. I am pleased to announce that
Christine Glastonbury, a member of our Education
Committee, will serve as our representative to the ASNR.
The Education Committees of both societies face the daunting
task of updating our core curricula to reflect not only
new imaging modalities but also the changing mechanisms
of education—electronic and otherwise.
The relationship between the ASHNR and the ACR has
been less dynamic, but not less important, in accomplishing
our goals. The ASHNR periodically reviews and revises the
ACR guidelines for imaging the sinuses, temporal bones and
neck that form a core element of the ACR accreditation
process for Computed Tomography.
Each year, the ASHNR president participates in the ACR
Intersociety Summer Conference. Regular readers of this
newsletter will recall that Vijay Rao summarized the results of last year’s conference in the Fall 2005 issue. The 2006
Intersociety Conference, to be held in late-July, will focus on
“Quality, A Radiology Imperative.”
The Institute of Medicine’s publications “To Err is
Human” and “Crossing the Quality Chasm” pointed out the
enormous problem of patients who are harmed by avoidable
medical errors. In response, healthcare institutions, regulators,
and payers have intensified their efforts to practice
quality medicine. Radiology plays a central role in the care of
most patients and is critically important to these efforts.
There are, however, a number of challenges. How do we
define quality? Should there be standards for image interpretation
similar to those standards for image acquisition?
Can we measure outcomes and not merely process? How
does quality affect productivity? How can we incorporate
quality into our practices and training programs? What incentives
are needed to accomplish these goals?
I welcome your responses to these questions in advance
of the meeting. If you have suggestions for discussion at the
conference, please email them to me (rholliday@nyee.edu).
Roy A. Holliday, MD
ASHNR President
