eHealth Technologies announced today that Massachusetts General Hospital has selected the new eHealth Connec® Referral Portal to provide referring physicians easier access to their facility and a clear, single process to submit new referrals.  The site also allows the referring provider to receive key updates about their patients’ appointments and the results of the referrals.

It is time to move patient self-reported surveys from the realm of research into everyday clinical practice, according to an American Heart Association (AHA) scientific statement published online May 6 in Circulation. The authors argue that health-related quality of life assessments should be a component of patient-centered care.

Michael S. Emery, MD, a cardiologist at Carolina Cardiology Consultants in Greenville, S.C., shares his experiences as a medical volunteer at the Boston Marathon in a post on the American College of Cardiology’s blog, ACC in Touch. “Even though I’m a cardiologist and not trained to handle trauma, it really was about the basics of care – stabilize and evacuate!” Emery is co-chair-elect of the American College of Cardiology’s Sports and Exercise Cardiology Section Leadership Council.

Michael J. Ackerman, MD, PhD, and Pedro J. Caraballo, MD, of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., described in a video the development of an alert system that flags QT-level prolongation that may indicate a patient is at risk of sudden cardiac death. In a paper published in the April issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings, they reported the institution-wide system is a noninvasive marker of mortality. Ackerman said the next step is to determine if the alert modifies physician behavior to provide potentially lifesaving interventions.

Cardiologist Thomas H. Lee, MD, will leave his position as network president at Partners HealthCare System in Boston to assume the role of chief medical officer at Press Ganey Associates in South Bend, Ind., as of July 1.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office charged Novartis Pharmaceuticals with violating the False Claims Act for allegedly paying physicians kickbacks to induce them to prescribe two cardiovascular drugs and one diabetes treatment. The court filing included examples of meals that cost more than $1,000 a person and a $1,500 honorarium for a talk that never happened.

A crowdsourcing tournament in Philadelphia County accurately located 1,429 automated external defibrillators (AEDs). The project, detailed in the March issue of Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, demonstrated the feasibility of mobilizing “citizen scientists” to build a comprehensive map to guide bystanders in a crisis.

A community-based initiative in California trimmed hospital readmissions and saved about $32 million in medical costs, according to a report at an April 24 conference. The Avoid Readmissions through Collaboration (ARC) project announced April 24 that participants reduced readmissions by 11 percent over a two-year period.