Declining coronary angioplasty volume in the U.S. and Canada will keep growth in the device market tepid, according to an analysis by MarketsandMarkets. The company projected the markets for interventional and peripheral vascular devices will inch up to about $6 billion by 2018.

An innovative program focused on outcomes in patients with stable ischemic heart disease could change the cost of healthcare. On May 22, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation granted $15.8 million to the SMARTCare pilot program, which is expected to save $42.2 million over the three-year pilot program across 10 participating sites.

The architects of the release of physician-specific Medicare payments and the president of the American College of Cardiology (ACC) agree on at least one point: Making the healthcare system’s costs more transparent is a good thing. But they part ways on the quality and usefulness of the data made public in April in two perspectives published online May 28 in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Hospitals can lower the cost of an initial acute stroke admission by shortening treatment times or reducing use of routine anesthesia in patients who receive medical or endovascular treatment, an analysis of the IMS III Trial found.

Hospitalization and costs for atrial fibrillation spiked between 2000 and 2010 in the U.S., particularly among octogenarians. The authors of the analysis published online May 19 in Circulation called the trends alarming.

Starting salaries for cardiologists in 2013 exceeded the national median for specialty care physicians in the U.S., according to the Medical Group Management Association. Results from its annual salary survey hinted at a favorable market for early career physicians.

Between 25 percent and 42 percent of Medicare beneficiaries received a low-value service in 2009, with cardiovascular testing and procedures accounting for much of the spending. The results were published online May 12 in JAMA Internal Medicine.

St. Jude Medical, Inc. (NYSE:STJ), a global medical device company, today announced that data presented during Heart Rhythm 2014, the Heart Rhythm Society’s Annual Scientific Sessions, found that the use of quadripolar leads reduced the number of hospitalizations by 53 percent when compared to the non-quadripolar group. This hospitalization rate reduction translated into a statistically significant 62 percent reduction in overall costs for both health care systems and patients.