In October, they gave us fair warning: “If the Deficit Reduction Act goes through…facilities will buy less and less expensive products,” said one participant. Others echoed this, and now the river of anxiety has morphed into a tsunami.
With the DRA here, we re-visit the issue, questioning an industry cross-section to find some surprising issues hiding in the shadows.

On Friday, April 13, 2007, the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) released Proposed Inpatient Rules for 2008. Highlights of the proposed rules related to cardiovascular reimbursement include:

The state of cardiology care, today and for the future, paints a glowing — and growing — picture. Whether from echo, EKG, cardiac cath, nuclear medicine, multislice CT or MR, the number of images produced to diagnose and treat a single patient can range from tens to thousands. To help manage the data and guide them in their decision-making, cardiologists rely on cardiology information and image management systems (CIIMS) to access, display, review and archive past and present cardiac studies.
Seamless interfacing, structured reporting

The business phrase “return on investment” or ROI within the healthcare industry often denotes a caricature approach to purchasing that makes it seem like that the person who wants to financially validate an expenditure is not patient friendly. In reality, this notion couldn’t be further from the truth of what a strong ROI process within healthcare institutions should represent.

There’s not much about The Wisconsin Heart Hospital (TWHH) that isn’t on the cutting edge of cardiovascular technology, including the way it operates.
The 60-bed Wauwatosa, WI-based hospital was founded as a partnership between cardiovascular, vascular and specialty physicians to offer a patient and family-centered experience. Its design allows patients to remain in the same private room throughout their stay, rather than being moved from surgical intensive care to a telemetry unit to a medical surgery unit.

Just how many deaths each year can be directly attributed to vulnerable plaque (VP) is still being studied. But researchers and clinicians are not underestimating the danger that may be lurking inside an arterial wall.

The three hospitals of the Valley Health system in northwestern Virginia have improved the quality and efficiency of cardiac care by installing Cardiac Science’s Pyramis system to manage data from its diagnostic cardiology devices and to integrate this data with central admission, order and billing systems.

Dayton Heart Hospital (DHH) is a 47-bed facility located in Dayton, OH, that provides a full array of cardiovascular services. Diagnostic capabilities include cardiac CT, cardiac cath lab, EP lab, peripheral angiography, nuclear medicine stress testing and cardiovascular ultrasound among others. But it’s been its leadership in adopting a multidepartment PACS that has allowed DHH to redefine and improve cardiovascular care centered on their unique physician-driven, patient-focused care model.

Maintaining a continuous, accurate arterial pressure (AP) signal in the presence of electrosurgical interference is paramount to ensuring precise triggering and timing parameters. It has been demonstrated that heart failure patients on IABP therapy can experience timing errors during arrhythmias that can adversely affect left ventricular (LV) performance. Also, the delays and distortions of traditional fluid-filled transducer systems have been shown to interfere with timing, contributing to a misrepresentation of hemodynamics.


In the new order of the day, many experts believe that CT angiography (CTA) will replace invasive cardiac catheterization as the primary diagnostic tool for detecting coronary artery disease (CAD) and disorders. This notion has been backed by heavy investments from vendors in clinical trials that may shore up supporting data.

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