Updates about transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) are always big news, but the new five-year data from the CoreValve™ US Pivotal and SURTAVI trials came as a welcome surprise to many cardiologists.
Gain a deeper understanding of how intravascular lithotripsy works and to code appropriately for both peripheral and coronary IVL procedures. We dig into coding and billing specifics for hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers and physicians—and also navigate transitional pass through (TPT) and New Technology Add-On Payment (NTAP). See what codes and updates have changed that your team should be implementing now.
The trend to get PCI patients out of the hospital safely on the same day as their procedure has long been a goal for many health systems. WellStar Kennestone Regional Hospital, part of WellStar Health System in Atlanta, made same-day discharge for a vast majority of PCI patients a mission three years ago.
“Good harmony” is the way John P. Erwin III, MD, describes the synergy of the 2021 ESC/EACTS Guidelines for the management of valvular heart disease (VHD) released in August along with the ACC/AHA guidelines that rolled in December 2020.
It’s not uncommon for severe aortic stenosis to go unrecognized, and thus untreated. When the data points to the existence of low-flow, low-gradient aortic stenosis, a diagnosis can be even more challenging.
For patients with peripheral arterial disease, the mainstay of initial treatment is always risk factor modification, ambulation, and compliance with guideline-based medical therapies. However, for patients who have lifestyle limiting claudication or have progressed to critical limb ischemia (CLI), intervention is warranted.
Improving access is at the center of a pair of new trends in treating peripheral artery disease (PAD). First is the office-based lab (OBL) expanding access to more PAD patients needing therapy, and the second is physicians more often choosing alternative access such as radial, tibial or pedal to treat those patients. Why now?
The patient was a 77-year old diabetic with an ulcer on her big toe. There was almost no blood flow to the foot, and she was in terrible pain. Her podiatrist had sent her to the hospital. The nurses who initially checked the foot had seen cases like this plenty of times. If the woman was lucky, the surgeon might be able to amputate the foot and save the rest of the leg below the knee.
As recently as eight months ago, cardiologists sitting down to work with medical images at Novant Health had plenty of choices on where and how to go about that part of their jobs.
In February and March 2020, the inevitable happened: COVID-19 came to the United States, hitting the country’s healthcare system like a 10-pound sledgehammer.
