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What Now for USPSTF, Progress Against Cancer, and VA Salary Cap Relief
September 21, 2026
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Together with
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“When radiology becomes a report produced by someone hundreds or thousands of miles away, we don’t just lose proximity. We risk losing that entire feedback loop.”
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Radiology Sheep, on the lost art of the reading room consult.
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Establishing a cardiac CT program can be challenging but immensely worth it for your practice and your patients. Join us and our sister site Cardiac Wire on Friday, September 25 at 2 pm ET / 11 am PT for a live discussion featuring cardiac imaging experts on how and why they developed their cardiac imaging practices. – Brian Casey, Managing Editor
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After not meeting for over a year and undergoing major turnover, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. last week announced new members of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force – including the USPSTF’s first-ever radiologist.
USPSTF was created in 1984 as a panel of experts tasked with producing evidence-based advice on preventive medical care, like cancer screening guidelines.
- But it’s that last responsibility that’s drawn the USPSTF into controversy. The group in 2009 changed its blanket recommendation regarding screening mammography for women aged 40 to 50, instead recommending women consult with their doctors. This sparked a backlash that persisted until 2023, when it said it would lower the age back down to 40.
Indeed, the USPSTF has often been accused of being too conservative in recommending new technologies that have life-saving potential.
- For example, its implementation of the new mammography screening guidelines neglected to recommend supplemental dense breast screening, despite the demonstrated connection between dense breasts and cancer risk.
Enter RFK, Jr., who as HHS secretary has appointment authority over the panel’s 16 members (who, it should be noted, serve as volunteers rather than as federal employees).
- He’s held the USPSTF with the same suspicion he reserves for the rest of the U.S. medical establishment, and on his watch the group has gone a year and a half without a meeting. He also removed both of the panel’s vice chairs in May.
RFK, Jr. hadn’t revealed much about his intentions for the panel, but that ended on September 17, when HHS announced a new slate of appointments.
- He tapped eight new members, including a number of medical specialists, addressing a frequent criticism that the USPSTF was too heavily weighted toward primary care and lacked specialty experience.
And in what is a first, he named a radiologist to the USPSTF: Dennis Wulfeck, MD, of MBB Radiology, a Radiology Partners-affiliated practice in Jacksonville, Florida.
- Wulfeck earned his MD at Wright State University, performed his residency at the University of Louisville, and completed a fellowship in nuclear medicine at the University of Cincinnati. Wulfeck has published research in nuclear medicine and has been involved in radiology practice issues.
What now for the USPSTF? While the new appointments seem to represent physicians from U.S. medicine’s mainstream, their work will be closely scrutinized for signs of politicization, particularly around RFK, Jr.’s pet issue of childhood vaccines. The USPSTF hasn’t said when its next meeting will take place.
The Takeaway
Radiology has long had a complicated relationship with the USPSTF, mostly due to its conservative stances on cancer screening and the adoption of new imaging technologies. Will that change with a radiologist now serving on the panel? We shall see.
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The Radiology Layer Nobody Talks About
Detection algorithms, generative reporting tools, and worklist triage engines are only as good as the data that reaches them. Kailo Medical’s KailoHub is the connective tissue that sits between everything. Learn how it can benefit you on this page.
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More than an Image. The Big Picture
AGFA HealthCare understands that striking the critical balance between clinical efficiency and quality delivery of patient care starts with the clinician experience. Learn how their Enterprise Imaging platform makes the complex simple.
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Advanced Medical Imaging in Small-Town Iowa
Clarinda Regional Health Center has been a cornerstone of care in Clarinda, Iowa, since opening its doors in 1939. Learn how CRHC partnered with United Imaging to bring advanced imaging capabilities directly to its patients.
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- Progress in the War on Cancer: More people are surviving cancer in the U.S. than ever before, even as the number of new U.S. cancer cases is expected to increase 19% by 2050. The AACR’s 2026 Cancer Progress Report showed rising cancer survival rates – especially for breast and lung cancer – and new technologies like AI could drive survival even higher. The overall five-year survival rate for distant-stage cancer is more than double what it was three decades ago (17% to 36%).
- New Bill Addresses VA Salary Cap: Is help on the way for beleaguered Veterans Health Administration (VHA) physicians? Legislation that would let VHA hospitals waive the health system’s $400,000 cap on physician salaries has been introduced in Congress. The VA Salary Cap Waiver Adjustment Act would enable VHA medical directors to exceed existing salary caps for hiring and retaining physicians. The VA’s salary cap is being blamed for a mass exodus of physicians from the system, including radiologists, who can earn much higher salaries in the private sector.
- VA Staff Shortages Hit 7-Year High: Meanwhile, a new report issued by the VA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) documents the severity of the agency’s crisis, finding that VHA healthcare personnel shortages have hit a seven-year high. The new OIG report documents 4.7k “severe occupational staffing shortages,” with 97% of facilities reporting severe shortages for medical officers and 86% reporting shortages for nursing occupations. All 139 VHA hospitals reported staffing shortages.
- Radioisotope Firms Telix and ITM to Unite: Radiopharmaceutical firms Telix Pharmaceuticals and ITM Isotope Technologies Munich are uniting in a move that will see Telix acquire all ITM’s outstanding shares in an acquisition valued at $1.65B. ITM makes a broad range of therapeutic radioisotopes, including lutetium-177 and actinium-225, while Telix recently gained FDA approval for its Pixclara PET tracer for glioma imaging. Consolidation in the radioisotope sector is accelerating, such as via Curium’s $8B bid to acquire Lantheus.
- Speeding Up MRI Tech Certification: For those training to become MRI technologists, difficulty finding sites to fulfill clinical placement requirements can cause delays even after their education is well underway. With a 17% MRI tech vacancy rate, that’s time radiology doesn’t have. A new partnership between the Pulse Radiology Institute and DeVry University is aiming to speed up the process by securing clinical placements at one of >1.8k partners across the U.S. before students even enroll, taking a burden off students and administrators alike.
- New VLM for Abdominal CT Scans: Researchers from China are touting the performance of an open-source vision language model (VLM) for abdominal CT scans developed by DAMO Academy, a subsidiary of Chinese technology giant Alibaba. Called RADAR, they described the VLM in a paper in Science in which it was tested on 146 imaging findings in a real-world database of 39k exams. RADAR achieved an AUC of 0.913, and in further tests at external sites AUCs remained high (0.874-0.912). And in a reader study with 26 radiologists from 14 centers, radiologists using RADAR had 10% higher sensitivity.
- Ikonopedia Release Supports Updated BI-RADS: Ikonopedia released a new version of its breast imaging structured reporting and clinical decision support software that aligns with the latest BI-RADS edition. Ikonopedia 2026.08.0 incorporates updates that align with BI-RADS v2025 (6th Edition), such as enhancements to method-of-detection tracking and reporting, as well as additional performance improvements. Terminology changes include the removal of terms like “developing asymmetry” in mammography and “focus” in breast MRI to reflect evolving breast imaging standards.
- Contrast Shortage Affected CT Use: The shortage of iodinated contrast media after the COVID-19 pandemic had a major impact on CT use. A new study examines the fallout, finding that of 12.2k emergency cases, the probability of repeat imaging in patients who got an initial CT scan without contrast was actually 2.9 percentage points lower when contrast was being rationed – contrary to the researchers’ expectations. But patients who did get repeat scans had longer outpatient and inpatient length-of-stay periods (1.5 and 4.2 days, respectively).
- Philips Scores Milestone CT Installation: Philips made the first U.S. installation of its new Rembra CT scanner. The milestone system was installed at Southwest Mississippi Regional Medical Center (SMRMC) in McComb. The Rembra scanners were cleared earlier this year and feature wide 85cm bores, as well as Philips’ new XD detector technology for higher-resolution images. SMRMC will use the scanner for both emergency and radiology applications.
- IR Specialization and Complexity: A new report from ACR Neiman HPI researchers offers insights into the complexity of interventional radiology procedures. Their review in JACR of 29.8k radiology practice-years from 2008 to 2023 found that practices that focused more on interventional work had greater odds of performing more complex procedures. The association between interventional focus and complexity was particularly strong for individual radiologists, highlighting the variation in practice patterns as interventional radiology carves out a role as an independent specialty.
- Carestream’s New X-Ray System: Carestream Health last week released Starview, a new floor-mounted digital X-ray system for routine radiographic imaging. The system includes a 43 x 43cm detector with in-tray charging and an 8-inch tubehead touchscreen, as well as features like detector locking and three generator configurations. Carestream has sharpened its focus on digital imaging after completing a refinancing earlier this year that reduced its debt load by 60%.
- Eon Collaborates With CancerIQ: A partnership announced last week combines Eon’s AI-enabled follow-up system with CancerIQ’s pre-scan risk assessment to help more at-risk patients complete the screening lifecycle. The collaboration will give Eon’s partners at 75 health systems access to CancerIQ’s EHR-connected genetic/lifestyle risk identification platform, which has reportedly helped health systems earn a nearly 9X higher return on investment. The >200 clinics using CancerIQ are also gaining a well-practiced partner: Eon has enabled timely follow up for more than 2M patients.
- Spotting Coronary Inflammation Simply: Caristo Diagnostics highlighted research at ESC 2026 showing that its FAI-Score biomarker can assess coronary inflammation from non-contrast cardiac CT, flagging high risk regardless of calcium score. The company also touted full results from the ORFAN analysis that showed an elevated FAI-Score was associated with cardiovascular death even in patients lacking the usual risk factors. A third data readout also showed Caristo’s AI predicted stroke from routine CT independent of AFib.
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AI Echo for Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy
Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is a leading cause of sudden cardiac death in the young. It is now treatable in the era of cardiac myosin inhibitors, yet remains substantially underdiagnosed. Learn how AI echo with Us2.ai can help.
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The Heart of a 30-Year Relationship
Regional Medical Imaging (RMI) has relied on Merge for its enterprise imaging needs for over 30 years. Learn how Merge gives RMI the scalability and flexibility to keep up with growth, while Merge’s cloud solution helps offload strain on the network.
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Reimbursement for AI-Powered CAC Scoring
Medicare reimbursement for AI-powered coronary artery calcium scoring is now available with code G0680. Find out how it can impact your practice – and your patients – in this video interview with Riverain Technologies.
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- Technical Brilliance That’s a Generation Ahead: Read with the highest quality and precision at ultrafast speed using Visage Imaging’s friction-less, server-side architecture, enabling you to use Visage 7 on your favorite devices without compromise.
- Top Health Systems Are Providing Patient-Friendly Reports: Scanslated is the digital patient experience platform trusted at scale by Duke Health, Lumexa Imaging, and other patient-centric healthcare providers. Find out how Scanslated can work for you today.
- Reporting Is Radiology’s Next Transformation: While AI’s role in diagnostic imaging is well-established, one part of the workflow has remained largely unchanged despite its central role: the report. Read this article from DeepHealth to learn more about radiology’s next transformation.
- Next-Generation DICOM SR Workflow Engine Messaging: The accelerating adoption of AI-powered radiology reporting has propelled replacement of legacy speech recognition integration technology. Discover how Altamont Software’s Passport SR can help you manage the shift with a modern DICOM SR engine.
- Preserve Your Radiography Investment: FutureProof 20 is Philips’ commitment to support their Radiography 7300 C for 20 years, helping you keep the system performing for decades, reducing total cost of ownership over the long run and letting you focus on the patient.
- The Business Case for Modernizing Medical Imaging: Explore the business case for modernizing medical imaging with Intelerad’s IntelePACS and InteleOrchestrator. Read the white paper to learn how healthcare organizations can improve operational efficiency, diagnostic quality, and cost management while delivering measurable business value.
- A New Resource for Radiology Jobs: Check out the new Job Boards from Medality to gain access to newly posted positions for radiologists, residents, and fellows. If you’re an employer, post your first job for free to reach Medality’s network of over 40,000 monthly users.
- Modernize PACS Without a Rip-and-Replace Budget: The question isn’t what modernization costs. It’s what standing still costs in support contracts, migration debt, and risk you already carry. Mach7’s framework gives CIOs and imaging leaders a phased path they can defend to finance. Read the framework.
- Smoothing the Transition to Radiology Integration: Consolidation among medical imaging providers is creating challenges when it comes to managing and integrating image data from diverse sources. In this edition of The Imaging Wire Show, we discussed how solutions from Enlitic can smooth the transition.
- 3T Wide-Bore MRI Delivers Power with Purpose: Translate groundbreaking discoveries into patient care with SIGNA Bolt, GE HealthCare’s visionary 3T MRI scanner that empowers leading-edge research for real patient care.
- A Long-Term Partnership: Nashville General Hospital aimed to enhance their mammography and CT systems to remain competitive, and Fujifilm stood out as the right fit. Learn how they enhanced patient care with Fujifilm’s ASPIRE Cristalle 3D mammography system and Scenaria View CT scanner.
- Leveraging AI-Powered Discovery for Image Exchange: Southwest Medical Imaging, a premier physician-owned radiology practice in the southwestern U.S., partnered with Medicom to streamline their workflow. Discover how they utilize Medicom’s AI-powered Smart Search, which leverages an LLM to automatically detect and surface imaging data, to eliminate manual searching and accelerate patient care.
- Tackling Radiology’s Capacity Issue: Healthcare providers are under pressure from rising costs, care delays, and growing cybersecurity risks. Watch this video to discover how Mosaic Clinical Technologies delivers a future-ready imaging solution that improves continuity of care and accelerates detection for faster, more appropriate interventions.
- The Future of Radiology Is Operational Transformation: In this webinar at 12 pm ET on Tuesday, September 29, discover how leading radiology groups are increasing throughput, reducing report turnaround times, improving workload equity, and helping attract and retain radiologists through a new approach to enterprise radiology operations.
- Leadership in Life Sciences: Quibim is committed to accelerating its development within the life sciences sector and strengthening collaborations with leading pharmaceutical companies. Learn about recent leadership developments that are moving the company forward.
- How AI is Unlocking Opportunistic Screening: Routine imaging already contains preventive health information patients often never receive, and AI is making it possible to surface that data. Learn how CARPL can help you implement opportunistic screening on this page.
- Why Cloud? Why Now? Attend this webinar at 2 pm ET on Wednesday, September 23 to learn how St. Luke’s University Health Network outgrew its legacy PACS and turned to Sectra’s cloud-based SaaS enterprise imaging platform.
- How to Choose Between Tableside and Remote Fluoroscopy: Need help deciding whether tableside or universal remote fluoroscopy is right for you? This whitepaper from Siemens Healthineers may be able to put things in perspective.
- Reporting Is Changing. Learn From Those Who’ve Done It: A reporting transition is about more than technology. Hear radiology leaders from Yale, Emory, and RAF share lessons on managing change, minimizing disruption and making the move successfully. Watch the webinar.
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