Healthcare Economics & Policy

The cardiology division at Columbia University’s Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons received a donation of $32.5 million this month—a gift the program’s leaders say will go toward patient care, research and education.

Pharmacy closures across the U.S. are driving significant declines in medication adherence among Americans, a recent study has found, especially those who are older and live in neighborhoods with low accessibility.

A cardiologist at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Syracuse, N.Y., is one of 60 that’s been charged in an illegal prescription opioid scandal that spans the U.S.

CMS proposed to expand reimbursement for ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM) to patients with suspected masked hypertension while continuing to cover it for those with white coat hypertension.

Three physicians published an editorial in Stroke proposing that tertiary healthcare centers in cities be held to stricter standards for performing endovascular thrombectomy (EVT) than their rural counterparts.

Several professional medical societies have now weighed in on a bill introduced to Congress on April 9 which seeks to prevent physicians from self-referring Medicare patients to in-office “ancillary services” including advanced imaging, anatomic pathology, radiation therapy and physical therapy.

The FDA’s decision to mandate labeling of added sugar content on packaged foods and beverages is estimated to prevent nearly 1 million cases of diabetes and cardiovascular disease over the next 20 years and save the U.S. $31 billion in net healthcare costs over that timeframe.

An April 2 story in the New York Times highlighted a potentially dangerous insurance coverage gap faced by heart transplant patients and recipients of other organs—the immunosuppressive drugs they need to prevent organ rejection sometimes aren’t covered by Medicare if they received the transplants before enrolling in the program.

French drugmaker Sanofi announced on April 10 a plan to lower its insulin prices to $99 per month for some U.S. patients, beginning in June. The announcement came amid a series of congressional hearings about drug costs and was met with questions about why this move and other recent cost-cutting measures took so long.

Cardiologists earn the fourth-most money of any medical specialty, according to Medscape’s 2019 physician compensation report, bringing in an average of $430,000 each year.

A study of nearly 900,000 patients with heart failure or cardiogenic shock revealed their race, insurance coverage and ZIP code were associated with their odds of receiving a left ventricular assist device (LVAD).

Medtronic has struck a value-based agreement with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota in which the medical device company will pay back the insurer if patients using the Guardian Connect continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) system fail to keep their blood sugar levels within a specified range.