HCI's Monthly Review of the Healthcare Industry
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Robert J. Stilley
President, CEO
HeartCare Imaging, Inc.
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Dear Colleagues,
Is our care 'patient centric'? That's a question we need to always ask ourselves to ensure the best outcome for the patients we care for. Medicine has advanced such that physicians are able to specifically focus on areas to ensure they can provide the best care for patients that are affected by the disease they are trained to treat. But, have we become so advanced that physician specialization along with insurance company and medical society guidelines could be detrimental to patient care. While the documents that spell out appropriate care guidelines are well intended, they aren't always the best course. They can take away the independent thought and problem solving of some of the brightest and most highly trained professionals in our society, physicians. Physicians need to be aware of these guidelines but also have the ability to make patient specific decisions in order to provide the best patient outcome. Specialists are needed to work on specific disease processes; however, many times patients have multiple issues that could be missed if the patient doesn't have someone coordinating their care. This is happening more and more as patients have moved away from having a primary care physician and instead use the urgent care or ER as the primary source of care. The advent and use of EMR should provide the means to use data to provide patient centric care however most hospitals struggle with the systems and they aren't being used up to their potential due to their complexity. We still need (and probably always will need) primary care physicians to be the advocate and guide for patients as we navigate an ever more complicated system. These primary care physicians, NPs, and PAs working together with specialist physicians are critical in ensuring patients' health through true patient centric care. Focusing not only on the disease(s) but most importantly the patient might be the true definition of 'Patient centric care'. Those are my thoughts, let me hear yours.
Please enjoy this month's newsletter.
Sincerely,
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Long-Term Antibiotic Use May Up Women's Odds for Heart Trouble
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Antibiotics can be lifesaving, but using them over a long period might raise the odds of heart disease and stroke in older women, a new study suggests.
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Risk-Based Screening Improves Cardiovascular Disease Prevention
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Cardiovascular risk screening intervals based on risk category-specific progression rates would perform better and improve cost-effectiveness compared with established five-year screening intervals, according to a study published in the April issue of The Lancet Public Health.
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5 highlights from the CDC’s latest report on heart disease
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The CDC’s most recent Health, United States report, released this April, reveals the extent to which racial and ethnic disparities in the U.S. affect cardiovascular care and rates of heart disease in the country.
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Eating late and skipping breakfast raises risk of death, repeat events in STEMI patients
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Eating a late dinner and skipping breakfast could raise heart patients’ risk of a repeat MI or death by up to fivefold, according to research published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology April 17.
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Diabetes Drug Metformin May Help Reverse Serious Heart Condition
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The study, called the MET-REMODEL Trial, suggests that metformin can reduce left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) in people who have prediabetes.
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Glucose Screening in Pregnancy Can Predict Cardiovascular Risk in Women With, Without Gestational Diabetes
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Glucose screening during pregnancy can predict future cardiovascular (CV) risk in women with and without gestational diabetes, according to study results published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology. CV risk was found to be higher with abnormal glucose screening tests, but there was also increased CV risk in women with glucose concentrations at the upper end of the normal range.
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AHA News: Here's How Middle-Aged People -- Especially Women -- Can Avoid a Heart Attack
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Physical fitness is good for the heart, brain and overall health. But a specific type called cardiorespiratory fitness may help predict the odds of having a heart attack, especially for women, new research shows.
Higher cardiorespiratory fitness translated to lower heart attack risk, with women appearing to benefit the most. The findings suggest "cardiorespiratory fitness can be used as a risk calculator for first heart attacks," said Rajesh Shigdel, lead author of the Norwegian study published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
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Over Half of Patients Have Suboptimal Response to Statins
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More than half of patients initiating statin therapy have a suboptimal low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) response within 24 months, according to a study published online April 15 in Heart.
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Risk Model Developed for Readmission After AMI in Seniors
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A risk model has been developed and validated for hospital readmission within 30 days after acute myocardial infarction (AMI) in older patients and has demonstrated moderate performance, according to a study published online April 23 in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.
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Cardiac Amyloidosis Doesn't Have to Be Intimidating: A Primer on Diagnosis
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Many physicians learned a bit about amyloidosis in medical school but never expected to diagnose or treat it. Even today, as amyloidosis becomes more visible, it can be unsettling for us even to contemplate because there are multiple types and treatments vary.
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Omega-6 fatty acids may help prevent heart disease
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The higher the linoleic acid level in the body, the lower the risk of cardiovascular diseases, according to new study analysing nearly 70,000 people in 13 different countries. Linoleic acid is the most common polyunsaturated omega-6 fatty acid. The findings were published in Circulation.
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Your Life Span May Be Foretold in Your Heart Beats
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Where your resting heart rate goes, so goes your health.
That's the suggestion of a new study that found older Swedish men with a resting heart rate of 75 beats per minute had a doubled risk of an early death, even though that rate is well within the normal range of 50 to 100 beats per minute.
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Small Incision, Big Impact: How Minimally
Invasive Surgery Improves Outcomes
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The benefits of minimally invasive surgery (MIS) — compared to open-surgery — include fewer complications, less blood loss, shorter hospital stays, and lower readmittance rates.
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Commentary: Access to life-saving care has become increasingly challenging for rural women
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For the 60 million Americans living in rural communities, access to medical care is fragile. Unfortunately, that access is increasingly under threat. Since 2010, 95 hospitals across rural America have closed, and a new study shows that another 21% are at risk of closing. As access to rural healthcare continues to decline, it is important to understand the effects this will have on one of the groups this impacts the most: women.
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Increased serum uric acid in adolescents predicts hypertension, diabetic kidney disease
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More than 25% of teens with type 2 diabetes have hyperuricemia, which increases their risks for developing hypertension, cardiovascular disease and kidney disease, according to findings presented in Diabetes Care.
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FDA OKs 1st generic nasal spray of overdose reversal drug
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The Food and Drug Administration on Friday OK'd naloxone spray from Israel's Teva Pharmaceuticals.
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Could Ga-68 PSMA PET become essential for prostate cancer?
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Coupling the radiopharmaceutical gallium-68 (Ga-68) prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) with PET/CT or PET/MRI has been a boon for prostate cancer imaging. But clinicians still need to be aware of some inherent shortcomings with the radiopharmaceutical, according to a research review published online April 12 in Urology.
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Outcomes Worse for Cancer Patients Seen at Noncancer EDs
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Patients with cancer who are seeking cancer-related emergency medical care have worse outcomes when they are seen at alternative hospitals or those not associated with a cancer center, according to a study published in the April 23 issue of CMAJ, the journal of the Canadian Medical Association.
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Behavioural disorders in autistic kids linked to reduced brain connectivity: Study
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"Reduced amygdala-ventrolateral prefrontal cortex functional connectivity was uniquely associated with disruptive behaviour but not with severity of social deficits or anxiety, suggesting a distinct brain network that could be separate from core autism symptoms," explained Karim Ibrahim, first author of the study published in the Journal of Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging.
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Blood pressure drug shows promise for treating Parkinson's and dementia in animal study
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In a study published today in the journal Nature Communications, scientists at the UK Dementia Research Institute and the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research at the University of Cambridge have shown in mice that felodipine, a hypertension drug, may be a candidate for re-purposing.
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Neuroimaging method measures disease severity in Parkinson’s patients
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Dopamine transporter (DAT) SPECT may be a useful imaging biomarker to determine the severity of Parkinson’s disease, according to an April 17 study published in the American Journal of Roentgenology.
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CDC: Recent Decline Seen in High-Grade Cervical Lesions
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The number of cervical precancers (CIN2+ cases) in the United States declined from 2008 to 2016, likely in part because of prevention with the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, according to research published in the April 19 issue of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
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Checklist: 6 steps to a new EHR purchase
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The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology at HHS outlines best practices for selecting and implementing a new electronic health records system as part of its health IT playbook, a resource it first released in 2016.
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Physician-staffing firm email breach exposes 31,000 patients' data
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An unauthorized user recently accessed several employee email accounts at physician-staffing firm EmCare, compromising personal information from roughly 31,000 patients
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Teaching, rural hospitals gain from CMS readmission changes
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The CMS' Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program hit academic and rural hospitals with lower penalties in 2019 compared with 2018, after the agency made changes to the program, according to a new study.
The research, published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine, found 44.1% of teaching hospitals and 43.7% of rural hospitals experienced a lower penalty in 2019 compared with 2018 from the readmissions program. The smaller penalties were the result of changes made to the readmissions program this year in which hospitals were separated into five groups by similar proportion of patients who are dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid.
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Politics that Affect Medicine
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HHS to cap HIPAA fines based on 'culpability'
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The new system sets annual limits for these fines based on the organization's "level of culpability" associated with the HIPAA violation, according to the department's notice of enforcement discretion released late Friday. That means organizations that have taken measures to meet HIPAA's requirements will face a much smaller maximum penalty than those who are found neglectful.
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CMS throws rural hospitals a lifeline with wage index changes
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Starting in October, the agency wants to raise the index for low-wage hospitals at the expense of decreasing it for high-wage hospitals. The goal is to help close a wide payment disparity that some advocates say is fueling the rash of rural hospital closures. Still, rural hospitals are worried about how the change will affect them, and if it will be enough. Meanwhile, urban hospitals are likely to fight the expected reimbursement cut.
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CMS invites states to test new dual-eligible care models
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The CMS is inviting state Medicaid agencies to pursue new ways of integrating care for patients eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid—a population that has complex health needs and accounts for a big portion of spending in both public health programs.
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CMS backtracks on mandating EHR-PDMP integration in 2020
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The agency, which previously said it would require hospitals to integrate prescription drug monitoring programs into their EHRs by 2020, has opted to continue offering the "Query of PDMP" measure as an optional bonus item next year. The CMS also proposed removing the "Verify Opioid Treatment Agreement" measure for 2020. It was slated to be optional for 2019 and 2020.
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CMS to launch new direct-contracting pay models in 2020
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HHS on Monday launched an ambitious, double-pronged strategy to shift primary care from fee-for-service payments to a global fee model where clinicians and hospitals could assume varying amounts of risk.
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For over 25 years, HRSI has provided Authorized User (AU) classroom and laboratory training to physicians. HRSI's training is recognized by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and fulfills the didactic training required by law.
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Save the date for RSNA 2019
Join us for our 105th Scientific Assembly and Annual Meeting, December 1–6, 2019, at McCormick Place in Chicago, IL.
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Annual Scientific Session of the
American Society of Nuclear Cardiology
September 12-15, 2019 | Chicago, Ill.
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HeartCare Imaging, Inc. | Phone: 561-746-6125 | Fax: 561-741-2036 | info@heartcareimaging.com
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