Building a successful CCTA program: Physicians and healthcare executives to share advice
One of healthcare’s biggest ongoing trends is the substantial rise of coronary CT angiography (CCTA). Hospitals and health systems that fail to embrace the modality risk falling behind.
The steady rise of CCTA
CCTA has been growing more and more popular for years now, providing care teams with a noninvasive way to evaluate heart patients for a long list of potential complications. The modality was once used more as a gatekeeper—abnormal results would simply trigger physicians to order additional imaging. Now, however, CCTA offers a detailed look at the patient’s coronaries, including any worrisome plaques that may require treatment.
Along the way, CCTA has earned class IA recommendations in guidelines developed by the European Society of Cardiology, American College of Cardiology, American Heart Association and other leading medical societies. In addition, the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) finalized a new payment policy in 2024 that more than doubled the Medicare reimbursements hospitals receive for performing CCTA. U.S. cardiologists and imaging specialists cheered the news, knowing it would now be easier than ever to use cardiac CT when appropriate.
Getting the most out of CCTA results with AI
California-based Heartflow is a leader in artificial intelligence (AI)-based CCTA evaluations, offering such software solutions as Roadmap Analysis, FFRCT Analysis and Plaque Analysis to help physicians identify, diagnose and manage potentially fatal cardiac complications. These technologies have made a considerable impact on patient care, even helping influence the recent CMS decision to expand Medicare coverage for using certain AI algorithms to assess CCTA results.
It's with this forward momentum in mind that Georgia-based Wellstar Health System has collaborated with Cardiovascular Business on a new webinar designed to help healthcare executives, cardiologists, radiologists, cath lab directors and other cardiac imaging specialists learn more about how to build a thriving CCTA program.
The webinar, Wellstar’s CCTA + Heartflow Program Impact: Improving Patient Care While Driving Financial Growth, is scheduled for Tuesday, March 11 at 12 p.m. ET. An expert panel, including three Wellstar Health System leaders, will discuss their experience with CCTA before the floor is opened for a live Q&A session.
The webinar is free to attend. Click here to register and read additional details.
Michael has more than 18 years of experience as a professional writer and editor. He has written at length about cardiology, radiology, artificial intelligence and other key healthcare topics.