Cardiologists are facing rapid changes in reimbursement due to new payment models, but James C. Blankenship, MD, MHCM, says physicians should focus on providing the best quality of care for patients. He recommends physicians take care of everyone in their practice or group, as well. These days, physicians must also understand the balance between the traditional fee-for-service model and alternative payment models such as the Merit-based Incentive Payment System.

Andrea Baer, director of patient advocacy, discusses how Mended Hearts and Mended Little Hearts provide peer support to heart disease patients, families and caregivers. Participants benefit from receiving advice and feedback from people who have gone through similar experiences. Case studies from Mended Hearts have shown peer-to-peer support helps reduce readmissions and improve adherence to medications and treatment plans.

ACC Vice President C. Michael Valentine, MD, sees teams of physicians and administrators as key to managing the changing healthcare industry. Partnerships help them tackle legislative, administrative and financial changes. And while some clinicians complain about MACRA, Valentine says, the legislation aligns government and physicians in switching from volume- to value-based care. ACC has created a MACRA task force and website to inform cardiologists and patients.

Cathie Biga, RN, MSN, discusses the importance of pre-planning for physician practices to avoid an audit. Having a full compliance plan for coding and documentation audits helps with appropriateness criteria, electronic medical record standards and making sure billing matches up with documentation. She also recommends that practices have at least one person who understands the MACRA legislation and shares the information with the entire group.

Cardiovascular providers discuss their biggest challenges, including payers refusing to cover tests, procedures or medications that could benefit patients and providing costly and beneficial therapies and procedures while dealing with cost constraints. There are plenty more, listen in.

Cardiologists J.P. Reilly, MD, and Larry S. Dean, MD, offer insight on the two-year results of the ABSORB III trial that evaluated Abbott’s Absorb bioresorbable vascular scaffold. They also talk about the March 18th FDA advisory letter alerting healthcare professionals of an increase in major adverse cardiac events with the Absorb compared with the Xience drug-eluting stent. As they note, physicians need to be careful about selecting the right patients who may benefit from bioresorbable stents, using them in right-sized vessels and making sure to properly deploy the devices.

Treating today’s cancer patient no longer means simply targeting the cancer. Given the known cardiotoxicities of some established chemotherapies and the possibility that newer approaches may damage the heart, oncologists, cardiologists and imaging specialists now work together to detect and minimize the risk of treatment-induced heart failure.