Hospital readmission rates carry a large price tag. A study this week published in the Dec. 15 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine linked regional rates of rehospitalizations and overall admission rates, concluding that the future of policy efforts should focus on reducing the incentives to use hospital services, rather than better coordination of care.

CHICAGOThe Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is midway through its second year, and its impact is mixed, said Peter W. Carmel, MD, president of the American Medical Association and chair of neurosurgery at New Jersey Medical School in Newark, during the Pendergrass New Horizons Lecture on Nov. 28 at the 97th Scientific Assembly and Annual Meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).

Six Sigma and lean processes are more widely embraced by large and small healthcare providers. The key to their success is not the approaches themselves, but rather how they are applied.

SAN FRANCISCOFor those performing transcatheter aortic valve implantations (TAVI), E. Murat Tuzcu, MD, has some advice: prepare, anticipate and rehearse. Tuzcu, an interventional cardiologist at Cleveland Clinic, offered interventionalists some advice on how to avoid common and uncommon vascular complications during TAVI procedures, during a twilight session Nov. 10 at the 23rd annual Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) conference.

SAN FRANCISCOStarting a transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) program at a hospital will require wisdom, education and a team-based approach, Augusto D. Pichard, MD, director of the Washington Hospital Center Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory, said during a twilight session Nov. 10 at the 23rd annual Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) conference. Pichard informed the audience of what it takes to start and maintain a TAVI program, and said that above all, it will require team work.

ORLANDO, Fla.Thomas R. Aversano, MD, prinicipal investigator of C-PORT, spoke with Cardiovascular Business about his randomized trial, which evaluated the safety of elective PCI in higher volume facilities with and without surgical backup. The findings were presented as a late-breaking clinical trial Nov. 14 at the 2011 American Heart Association conference.

SAN FRANCISCO--Rotablation followed by implantation of a drug-eluting stent (DES) in patients with complex, calcified lesions was not superior to standard balloon angioplasty and reduced the stents efficacy, according to study results from the ROTAXUS trial released Nov. 11 at the 23rd annual Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT). Nonetheless, the clinical trials study chair and panelists agreed that rotablation should continue to play a role in the treatment of complex, calcified patients.

Optical coherence tomography of the performance of the first and second generation of the drug-eluting bioresorbable vascular scaffolds.Source: European Heart JournalSAN FRANCISCO--In a first-in-man clinical trial, a drug-eluting stent (DES) with a bioabsorbable polymer was shown to be non-inferior to a standard DES with a durable polymer in patients with coronary lesions. Ian Meredith, director of MonashHeart and Executive Director of Monash Cardiovascular Research Centre in Melbourne, Australia, presented the results Nov. 11 at a late breaking clinical trial press conference at the 23rd annual Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT).