Every resourceful 10-year-old knows to search beneath couch cushions and check the pockets of last seasons coats to find overlooked cash.

As technologies advance, it is critical that our processes for evaluating them also evolve. This is no small task, but it is necessary to ensure that U.S. patients have access to medical care based on the most current science.

Since 1991, there has been a growing risk for malpractice litigation stemming from a failure to communicate urgent or unexpected clinical findings from diagnostic examinations, according to a study published in the November edition of  the Journal of the American College of Radiology.

The stock markets are not the only entities that abhor uncertainty. The rational world of medicine also wrestles with unknowns, but unlike some investors, it doesnt let fear drive its responses.

Adults undergoing surgeries for congenital heart disease in pediatric hospitals do so at a lofty price tag, according to a report published Oct. 18 in Circulation: Quality and Outcomes. In fact, the researchers found that compared with lower-cost, lower-risk surgeries and more costly surgeries were linked with higher rates of inpatient death.

Increasingly burdensome regulatory policy can be blamed for driving research and development of new medical devices outside the U.S., according to the author of an Oct. 12 Competitive Enterprise Institute essay. The piece called for maintaining the 510(k) process and increasing oversight of the FDA.

There may not be enough physicians to go around, according to Merritt Hawkins' 2011 Survey of Final-Year Medical Residents." More than 75 percent of new doctors surveyed said that they had received at least 50 job solicitations during their training period, further outlining the nations physician shortage.

Pittsburgh-based payor HealthAmerica and Preferred Primary Care Physicians have launched a pilot program to provide coordinated and patient-centered primary care through improved communications with patients, physicians and care teams.