Senate confirms Leavitt as HHS Secretary

The Senate yesterday confirmed Michael Leavitt as the new HHS secretary, replacing Tommy Thompson.
   
Leavitt is the former administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency and former governor of Utah.
   
Healthcare IT is one of Leavitt's priorities, as well as Medicaid reform and medical liability reform, he said during his Senate confirmation hearing. Leavitt called IT an "essential economic competitiveness issue, as well as an important healthcare issue."

Around the web

The nuclear imaging isotope shortage of molybdenum-99 may be over now that the sidelined reactor is restarting. ASNC's president says PET and new SPECT technologies helped cardiac imaging labs better weather the storm.

CMS has more than doubled the CCTA payment rate from $175 to $357.13. The move, expected to have a significant impact on the utilization of cardiac CT, received immediate praise from imaging specialists.

The newly cleared offering, AutoChamber, was designed with opportunistic screening in mind. It can evaluate many different kinds of CT images, including those originally gathered to screen patients for lung cancer. 

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