|
The American Hospital Association (AHA) has offered an alternative approach for the definition of meaningful use, including the addition of 12 objectives to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
In a trial to assess gender differences in coronary plaque composition, researchers found that women presented less coronary segments with calcified and mixed plaque than men and had exhibited lower rates of coronary segments with stenosis equal to or fewer than 70 percent. The study was published in the Feb. 15 issue of the American Journal of Cardiology.
Written by Michael Bassett
While the technology behind cardiac advanced visualization (AV) can create some amazing images, it provides much more than just a “wow” factor. Radiologists and cardiologists rely on it to help them increase productivity and workflow and reduce costs, diagnose more quickly and accurately, and better communicate results with referring physicians and their patients.
Acute heart attack patients admitted to academic hospitals average a cumulative effective radiation dose of 14.52 mSv from imaging and other procedures. Researchers cautioned physicians to be aware of the cumulative effect of all ionizing radiation tests, rather than just focusing on the dose of each exam. The study was presented at the 2009 American Heart Association (AHA) meeting in Orlando, Fla., on Monday.
Strokes occur in infants and children much more frequently than previously reported, according to a study in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association.
The American Hospital Association (AHA), through its subsidiary AHA Solutions, has endorsed Extension’s HealthID, a secure smart card that holds individual patient data for use by hospitals.
Written by Justine Cadet
In a retrospective analysis of nearly 700,000 non-elderly Americans who underwent at least one medical imaging procedure over a three-year period, approximately 20 percent received a moderate to very high dose of radiation, according to data in the Aug. 27 New England Journal of Medicine. Michael S. Lauer, MD, who wrote the accompanying perspective, stated that most imaging tests haven’t yet proven their benefit compared with the potential risks and costs.
After playing a major role in elevating health IT into a leadership issue in the United States, the National Alliance for Health Information Technology (NAHIT) will cease operation on Sept. 30.
A collection of hospital industry groups, accompanied by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius at a White House press conference on Wednesday, agreed to accept $155 billion less in reimbursements from the federal government in an attempt to ensure that healthcare reform will be deficit-neutral.
The American Hospital Association (AHA) has released a statement supporting healthcare reform, but noted that it was "deeply disappointed and concerned to see the Obama Administration propose cuts of more than $220 billion to hospitals, especially during these tough economic times."
|
The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) is questioning whether the current proposed regulations in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) EHR Incentive Program allot enough time for providers to achieve meaningful use before they are penallized.
The absence of coronary calcification does not exclude obstructive stenosis or the need for revascularizations in patients suspected to have coronary artery disease (CAD), based on results of a substudy of the CORE 64 registry data published in the Feb. 16 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
Research presented at the 2009 American Heart Association (AHA) scientific sessions in Orlando based on the subanalysis from the ADMIRE-HF phase III clinical trial suggested that imaging of the cardiac sympathetic nerves using the molecular imaging agent 123I-meta-iodobenzylguanidine (123I-MIBG, AdreView; GE Healthcare) may be useful in the assessment of risk for cardiac arrhythmias and cardiac death.
Health IT is taking a central role in the current healthcare debate, according to a report published by the Institute for Health Policy at Massachusetts General Hospital, George Washington University Medical Center and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Healthcare consumers believe they should have a say about the development of health IT systems in order to protect the security and privacy of their own medical information, according to a report prepared for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
According to a new guideline document in the September issue of the Journal of the American Society of Echocardiography, echocardiography with Doppler is now the method of choice for non-invasive evaluation of prosthetic valves.
The Texas Heart Attack Prevention Bill, signed into law by Texas Governor Rick Perry in late June, is set to take effect on Sept. 1, and will require insurance companies to pay for heart attack preventive imaging screening tests.
The Physician Hospitals of America (PHA), which represents physician-owned hospitals, has rejected the American Hospital Association, Federation of American Hospitals and Catholic Health Association's agreement with the White House last week to reduce Medicare hospital spending by $155 billion, indicating it could destroy "physician-owned hospitals as a quid pro quo for the Medicare cost savings."
A new policy statement from the American Heart Association (AHA) advocates that healthcare facilities use high-quality video conferencing systems to connect expert neurologists for rapid, remote examination and treatment of patients undergoing suspected strokes. Commentary, published in the July 1 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, notes that reimbursement obstacles and the necessity of establishing "stroke systems of care" for effective assessment and treatment remain.
The Appropriate Use Criteria (AUC) task force has released the AUC for Cardiac Radionuclide Imaging, which refines appropriate use of pharmacologic tests compared with exercise stress tests and updates recommendations regarding radionuclide imaging in the perioperative setting.
|
RSS 
The use of health IT to reduce rehospitalizations will be welcome but also disruptive, said Stephen Jencks, an independent consultant in healthcare safety during a Feb. 24 webinar on the potential use of health IT to mitigate rehospitalizations, sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).
During the Health IT Standards Committee meeting on Feb. 24 in Washington, D.C., the Clinical Operations Workgroup sought to gather comments on proposed recommendations on implementation specifications for content exchange, vocabulary and code set standards for the Interim Final Rule of meaningful use.
In 2006, the Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH), a branch of the FDA, began examining the number of medical device reports they received. Over the past two years, the number of submitted reports has increased, sparking a demand for the CDRH to make a move to electronic reporting.
A new hospital breaking ground usually isn’t breaking news. But the vision of patient care at one new facility, tentatively named Palomar Medical Center West (PMC West), is currently illegal under California state law.