The cost of treating patients who received elective PCI at hospitals with no onsite cardiac surgery exceeds the cost for similar care at hospitals with on-site cardiac surgery, according to a substudy of the CPORT-E trial, presented Nov. 4 as a late-breaking clinical trial at the American Heart Association (AHA) scientific sessions in Los Angeles.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has released final rules with changes in Medicare’s payment of physician fees, including what the American College of Cardiology described as cuts to “important cardiovascular services.”

The American Hospital Association (AHA) and four hospital systems are suing the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) over rescinded Medicare reimbursement for services, such as cardiac catheterizations.

Does it pay to use financial incentives to try to improve the quality of care in hospitals? Possibly not, if physicians perceive factors such as patient nonadherence as being beyond their control, according to one study in the October issue of the American Journal of Managed Care.

MIAMI—Total hospitalization costs with transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) amount to approximately €40,000 ($51,713), mainly driven by length of stay and valve costs, according to a German scientific poster presented Oct. 23 at the Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) conference.

MIAMI—An analysis of procedure volumes with aortic valve replacement (AVR) for various regions revealed that Medicare policies dictating volume requirements may lead to variability in care and costs. The study, which found tremendous variability in costs and net margins across five U.S. medical centers, was presented as a scientific poster Oct. 23 at the Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) conference.

MIAMI—While lead investigator William Fearon, MD, touted fractional flow reserve (FFR) as “economically attractive in this cost-effectiveness analysis,” a physician panel during the Oct. 24 presentation of FAME 2 Cost-Effectiveness questioned whether that can be determined since the trial was stopped early, and longer-term data are lacking. This trial was presented as a late-breaking clinical trial at the Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) conference.

MIAMI—When tasked with predicting the cardiovascular healthcare landscape in 2022, David R. Holmes, MD, of Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., reminded an audience at the 2012 Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) conference on Oct. 23 that the specific goals set by healthcare leaders in 1927 mimic today’s agenda items, in spite of a different payment structure and more technological advances.