Hospital executives appear to be on the hunt for physician practices to acquire in 2013, according to a survey by the staffing service Jackson Healthcare, but cardiology is not the prize catch.

Thirty-day mortality rates for acute MI, heart failure and pneumonia at critical access hospitals rose between 2002 and 2010 while rates at non-critical access hospitals dropped, according to an analysis published April 3 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Any interventions designed to improve outcomes at critical access hospitals should be tested in a cluster randomized controlled trial, the author of an accompanying editorial advised.

In research, sometimes the process deserves as much accolades as the results. Take two recent studies where IT innovators not only built the foundation for the analyses but they also devised much needed solutions for tackling administrative data.

The Colloquium announced April 1 that IU Health Blackford Hospital became the first critical care access hospital in America to achieve Colloquium Heart Failure Accreditation.

More than 90 percent of patients who stop and restart statin therapy tolerated the drug long term. The results, published in the April 2 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine, used natural language processing software and an EHR to study patients commonly seen in clinical practice.

To avoid readmission penalties, some hospitals delegate resources to programs designed to keep patients from re-entering their doors. But are  hospitals that lack such resources being unduly punished? The New York Times explored the issue.

Physicians led the pack of professions for feeling that they apply their skills most effectively while nurses rose to the top for good dietary habits, according to a recent survey. The Gallup-Healthways Well-being Index found that physicians topped the list for overall well-being.

Florida cardiologist Abdur Razzak Tai, MD, received a six-year sentence in a fraud scheme involving a trust fund set up to compensate victims of the diet drug Fen-Phen. Tai was convicted on six counts of mail fraud and seven counts of wire fraud.