April 26, 2012 — Interventional cardiologists can and should lead efforts to improve quality, cut costs and ensure appropriate use of procedures. Elliott Fisher, M.D., MPH, professor of medicine at Dartmouth, an internationally recognized expert on variations in health system performance and one of the originators of the concept of accountable care organizations, will challenge the interventional cardiology community to accomplish these and other goals at a town hall meeting during the 2012 Scientific Sessions of the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions (SCAI) in Las Vegas. His keynote address, “Why Interventional Cardiology Needs to be a Change Leader,” will set the stage for an interactive discussion with cardiologists attending the conference.

April 24, 2012—Providing more guidance to clinicians on the provision of optimal patient care, the American College of Cardiology Foundation (ACCF), American Heart Association (AHA) and American Medical Association–convened Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement (AMA-PCPI) released a publication highlighting updated performance measures for adults with heart failure (HF). The 2011 performance measures include care provided in both the outpatient and inpatient setting, emphasizing the need to measure care quality over time and across providers, while also focusing on patient outcomes.

April 24, 2012 - SeptRx, an emerging medical device company that has developed the SeptRx Intrapocket PFO Occluder (IPO) — a platform for the percutaneous transcatheter closure of a heart defect known as patent foramen ovale (PFO) — reported that it has completed enrollment for its “InterSEPT” (In-tunnel SeptRx European PFO Trial) clinical trial in Europe, and has entered into a partnership with CoRRect Medical GmbH for commercial distribution in Germany and Switzerland of the SeptRx IPO.