White House appoints first radiologist fellow

Pat Basu, MD, attending radiologist at Stanford University and Palo Alto VA Hospital in California, has received a presidential appointment as a White House Fellow and Special Assistant to the President.

Basu is the first radiologist to receive such an appointment and one of only a few physicians to serve in this role, according to the American College of Radiology (ACR). At Stanford, he is course director of health policy, finance and economics. He is a former Rutherford Fellow in the ACR Washington, D.C. office. Basu has also served as a member of the ACR Resident and Fellow Section.

White House fellows typically spend a year working as a full-time, paid fellow to senior White House staff, cabinet secretaries and other government officials. Fellows also participate in an education program consisting of roundtable discussions with representatives from the private and public sectors and trips to study U.S. policy in action both domestically and internationally. Fellowships are awarded on a strictly non-partisan basis.

Responsibilities range from chairing interagency meetings and designing and implementing federal policies to drafting speeches for cabinet secretaries to represent their agencies on Capitol Hill, the ACR reported.

Around the web

RBMA President Peter Moffatt discusses some of the biggest obstacles facing the specialty in the new year. 

Deepak Bhatt, MD, director of the Mount Sinai Fuster Heart Hospital and principal investigator of the TRANSFORM trial, explains an emerging technique for cardiac screening: combining coronary CT angiography with artificial intelligence for plaque analysis to create an approach similar to mammography.

A total of 16 cardiology practices from 12 states settled with the DOJ to resolve allegations they overbilled Medicare for imaging agents used to diagnose cardiovascular disease.