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.

Implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs) are true lifesavers, but like all devices, their components potentially can malfunction. The natural life of a well-performing ICD lead, for instance, is about 10 years or so but several models of leads have higher rates of failure. Properly managing a patient with a failing lead or a recalled lead is a clinical challenge.

The New York Times featured Advocate Health Care, a nonprofit based in Oak Brook, Ill., in an article that details cost savings and improved quality achieved using an accountable care model. The effort is not without its own costs, though. Advocate “hired scores of workers to coordinate care and keep an eye on the highest-cost patients.”

The American College of Cardiology (ACC) selected Shalom Jacobovitz to lead the organization as its chief executive officer.  He will assume the position in May.

Many cardiology practices are facing a succession crisis and either don’t realize it, haven’t acknowledged it, or perhaps worse, aren’t willing to change to fix it.  Absent a formal plan, the default strategy becomes simple: Throw the keys on a desk and turn off the lights once your senior docs retire. This may sound extreme, but it’s what will happen if younger talent—in sufficient numbers to sustain a proper work/life balance—don’t replace those who are leaving.

It is difficult to anticipate the consequences of guidelines and how they affect practice. The 90-minute door-to-balloon (D2B) window for reperfusing STEMI patients may be a case in point.