March/April 2015

EHRs promised a new era of transparency among specialists and subspecialists. But, have they lived up to that golden promise? Results from two surveys suggest otherwise.

FACTOR-64 showed that screening diabetic patients who are at high risk of asymptomatic artery disease (CAD) using coronary CT angiography (CCTA) wasn’t justified. It was a well-designed, randomized clinical trial, the crème de la crème. Case closed.

Hospitals and health systems across the U.S. are answering the mandate of the Affordable Care Act to cut unnecessary costs. Florida Hospital Cardiovascular Institute in Orlando, a member of the Adventist Health System, is a hyperachiever—having cut more than $5 million thanks to a fully integrated, RFID-based inventory management solution deployed across their 13 interventional labs. If improving inventory management isn’t part of your arsenal for supply chain savings strategy, it’s time to take a closer look. 

To test or not to test? It’s a challenging question. With implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) technology now providing more efficacious and frequent shocks, some electrophysiologists have begun to question whether standard threshold testing is necessary for all implantations.

The cath lab is itself high-tech but some reports generated by its physicians still rely on old-fashioned dictation and transcription. Structured reporting offers a way into the present.

The American Stroke Association’s 2015 International Stroke Conference held Feb. 11-13 in Nashville, Tenn., likely lifted many spirits with findings that supported new therapies and identified opportunities to improve patient care.

At the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions’ (SCAI) Leadership Boot Camp, catheterization laboratory teams will learn skills they need to thrive while tackling high-pressure, high-stakes challenges.

If you want to avoid damaging litigation, concentrate on dialogue and details. Cardiologists who fail to maintain detailed, two-way conversations with patients and thoroughly assess diagnostic data are at risk of negligence lawsuits, a study shows.

Integrating new technology into everyday peripheral artery disease (PAD) practice may become a case of following the heart, or at least the coronaries.

Many cardiac surgery programs support early extubation of suitable CABG patients once they enter intensive care, based on clinical and economic benefits. Now some hospitals have shifted extubation to the cardiac operating room (OR) for a wide range of patients, young and old, with good results.

IT is a just a tool. It takes people to make IT effective. In complex organizations such as hospitals and healthcare systems, good or bad management may make or break adoption of EHRs. That was the hypothesis that researchers tested in a recent study.