The Ernst Cardiovascular Center, a 4,537 square-foot hub offering clinics for heart valve disease, atrial fibrillation and cardiovascular screening, has opened at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Mich.

When operating room personnel participated in a medical team training program, rates of surgical mortality declined, according to a study published in the Oct. 20 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Publicly reporting hospital quality data and outcomes does not assist Medicare beneficiaries in choosing hospital facilities that report better outcomes for high-risk surgeries, according to the results of a report published in the Oct. 19 issue of the Archives of Surgery.

Medicare beneficiaries with heart failure frequently utilize healthcare resources in the last six months of life, and use of medical resources and hospice has increased, particularly for intensive care, according to a study published online Oct. 11 in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

While transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) technologies have recently advanced and clinical trials have found the benefits of transapical and transfemoral techniques, the transfemoral should trump the transapical approach, according to a presentation by Jeffrey W. Moses, MD, at the 22nd annual Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) conference Sept. 22 in Washington D.C.

African-Americans and Hispanics who presented to the emergency room with chest pain were less likely than whites to be referred for immediate care, despite having similar symptoms, according to the results of a study published Sept. 24 in Academic Emergency Medicine.

Supplemental oxygen is used excessively in cardiac patients and may expose these patients to significant periods of hyperoxia. While use of oxygen is often necessary to treat hypoxia, its excessive use could lead to worse outcomes, according to a viewpoint published in the Sept. 21 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

The final meaningful use criteria for EHRs released in July by CMS and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) scaled back the original interim final rule. The newer version with less stringent requirements gives cardiologists more of a chance to secure federal dollars for incentive payments to offset the cost of health IT adoption. But will current EMR technologies make the meaningful use cut?