Clinicians are experiencing data overload, exacerbating the potential to stall decision making, and, thereby, negatively impacting patient care. Experts agree that a shortage of intensivists, cardiologists and nurses in the U.S. will only worsen in the next five to 10 years as the need for their services increases. Advanced wired, wireless and telemedicine monitoring technologies are helping to meet the increasing demands of an aging population and decreasing healthcare resources, while leading to improved outcomes and reduced lengths of stay.

Healthcare reform currently is generating a great deal of debate. However, there are at least two points on which Washington legislators seem to have reached a consensus. First, providers will be subject to greater transparency and accountability. Second, once most physician practices are equipped with EHRs, the data necessary to drive such transparency and accountability will flow effortlessly across the various health networks. While the ACC accepts the first premise, those with a working knowledge of health IT recognize that the second will be much more difficult to achieve.

The urgency to transition the U.S. healthcare system to a paperless system has increased as the government has offered incentives to get connected and penalties for those who lag behind. Advances in image and report IT capabilities allow cardiologists to now provide seamless access to all patient data across hospital departments and facilities.

A current review of the news shows that hospital-physician alignment has captured the headlines and cardiology is leading the charge as the No. 1 specialty to have discussions with hospital and health systems. Driving this trend are myriad market forces.

Clinical trial sites that do not adhere to the language written in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 requiring facilities to divulge privacy breaches to their patients, could pay up to a $50,000 penalty per violation.

NovaRad said its NovaPACS and NovaRIS products were selected for implementation at the Massachusetts General Physicians Organization imaging center in Danvers, Mass., and Partners Community Healthcare in Framingham, Mass.

Looking only at the costs of treatment for elderly patients who died from heart failure ignores important differences between hospitalssuch as survival ratesand overlooks potential associations between more resource use and better survival rates, according to a study published online Oct. 13 in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.

Intracavitary injections of anti-cancer compound 131I-TM601 were well tolerated and improved overall survival in the treatment of recurrent malignant glioma, according to the presentation at the 2009 joint meeting of the Society of Neuro-Oncology (SNO) and American Association of Neurological Surgeons/Congress of Neurological Surgeons (AANS/CNS) section on tumors in New Orleans last week.