SAN FRANCISCO—Quality of care does not diminish when hospitals convert from a non-profit to a for-profit structure, according to a poster presentation March 9 at the American College of Cardiology (ACC) scientific session. An analysis of acute MI measures found converting hospitals compared with controls maintained standards, including access to care for disadvantaged patients.

SAN FRANCISCO—“Will physicians' input be included in the healthcare delivery reform movement? If that’s just a dream, how can we as physicians turn it into a reality?” Thomas Lewandowski, MD, of Appleton Cardiology ThedaCare in Appleton, Wis., asked these questions at a March 9 session at the American College of Cardiology (ACC) scientific session.

A national commission convened to examine physician pay recommended abolishing the sustainable growth formula (SGR) and replacing the fee-for-service payment model with a system that rewards quality and value-based care.

Day-of-surgery admissions, early extubation and mobilization in pediatric surgeries to correct congenital heart defects (CHDs) reduce costs of admissions by a third, with no increase in morbidity and mortality, according to a study published online Feb. 26 in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.

WASHINGTON, D.C.—“I’m afraid we are slowly losing the [medical device] innovation pipeline unless we address it very quickly,” Yuval Binur, PhD, a venture capitalist and managing partner of Orchestra Medical Ventures, said Feb. 26 at the Cardiovascular Research Technologies (CRT) annual meeting.

Standard guideline-directed management of patients’ cardiovascular risk factors is more cost-effective than regular care plus counseling, according to a randomized controlled trial. But results in the Dutch study suggested women might benefit the most from the intervention.

Researchers have found significant regional variation in Medicare Part D spending for heart failure (HF) medications, as well as significant regional variation in medication adherence among HF patients. But they have not found an association between the two. The findings appeared online Feb. 11 as a research letter in the JAMA Internal Medicine.

An experimental procedure that combines minimally invasive surgery and recombinant tissue plasminogen activator (t-PA) to treat patients with intracerebral hemorrhages (ICH) saves more than $44,000 in medical care costs, researchers reported Feb. 7 at the American Stroke Association’s International Stroke Conference 2013 in Honolulu.