Coffee shops and bank automated teller machines (ATMs) offered the best out-of-hospital cardiac arrest coverage in Toronto from 2007 to 2015, according to a retrospective, population-based cohort study.

New research looking at the efficacy of rivaroxaban, an oral blood-thinning medication compared to aspirin yielded positive results for the complex drug, showing that it can limit the recurrence of a venous thromboembolism (VTE) without increasing the risk for bleeding.

 Effective patient education leads to improved informed consent, decreased preoperative anxiety and better postoperative pain management. Whether allocating office and hospital resources for patient education results in more cost-effective medicine is a more complicated issue.  

Don’t underestimate the importance of scheduling in running a successful cardiovascular practice. 

Policymakers from the FDA and CMS have been invited to participate in ACC.17, says Jeffrey T. Kuvin, MD, ACC.17 chair and chief of Cardiovascular Medicine at the Heart & Vascular Center of Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H. “This year, we’ll be able to draw on local  expertise, which also happens to be our nation’s expertise—people who can help us understand important, timely issues in cardiovascular medicine and in the world of medicine,” he says.

 Bundling is premised on viewing healthcare as a continuum, but most of today’s healthcare systems use electronic medical records (EMRs) developed for episodic fee-for-service billing. While many in the cardiovascular community are at the beginning of this experiment, some health systems participated in the earlier Bundled Payments for Care Improvement (BPCI) Initiative and have insights to share.    

As a growing body of evidence links palliative care to improved quality of life and better healthcare utilization for patients with heart failure, some in the medical community are advocating a shift from the traditionalist, acute care model to one more in tune with the psychological and physical needs of people with advanced cardiovascular disease.

Every day, cardiologists make hundreds, if not thousands, of mouse clicks, encounter countless notifications and manage a steady stream of alerts that pop up on their computer and device screens. Some say these demands of the electronic health record (EHR) are distracting clinicians from patient care and contributing to physician burnout. Yet there are workarounds that can help cardiologists handle the digital data deluge.