The Relationship Between Accreditation Requirements, Practice Parameters, and Technical Standards

Revision History

ACR accreditation program requirements are independent of the ACR Practice Parameters and Technical Standards. Any changes that are made to the ACR Practice Parameters and Technical Standards are not required to be adopted by the ACR accreditation programs. While the ACR Practice Parameters and Technical Standards can provide guidance to accredited facilities, the accreditation program requirements can be less restrictive or more restrictive than the ACR Practice Parameters and Technical Standards. The main reason that these programs must remain separate from each other was a result of the federalization of the ACR’s accreditation programs. In 1992, Congress passed the Mammography Quality Standards Act (MQSA) which required the implementation of mammography regulations by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Then again in 2008 the federal government stepped in to the imaging accreditation arena and passed the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act (MIPPA) which mandated imaging accreditation for outpatient imaging facilities that bill the technical component of imaging under Medicare Part B of the Physician Fee Schedule for CT, MRI, nuclear medicine and PET imaging. Any changes to these accreditation programs must be approved by either the FDA or CMS. In 2012, the ACR Practice Parameters and Technical Standards were formally disassociated from the accreditation programs and could no longer impact or drive the requirements of the accreditation programs.

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