The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is offering a lifeline to eligible professionals and group practices participating in the Electronic Prescribing (eRx) Incentive Program Group Practice Reporting Option that werent successful e-prescribers in 2011, so they can avoid the 2013 eRx Incentive Program payment adjustment.

Costs associated with privately insured patients receiving radiation therapy vary between freestanding radiation treatment facilities and the hospital outpatient setting, with freestanding facilities being less costly for treatment episodes lasting one or two months, and the hospital setting being less expensive for treatments of a longer duration, according to a study by Avalere Health.

Radiotherapy Clinics of Georgia, a radiation oncology practice located in Decatur, Ga., and its affiliates have agreed to pay $3.8 million to settle claims that they violated the False Claims Act after allegedly billing Medicare for medical treatments that were unnecessary or went beyond what is permitted by Medicare rules, according to the U.S. Justice Department.

Gary H. Gibbons, MD, founder and current director of the Cardiovascular Research Institute in Atlanta, will assume the duties of director the National Institutes of Healths National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) in the summer of 2012.

Despite the fact that radiation doses have been increasing along with a growing reliance on CT scans for diagnosis and therapy, the secondary cancer risk from multi-detector CT (MDCT) scans is low among older adults, the group subjected to the most frequent scanning, according to a study published in the April issue of the Journal of the American College of Radiology.

A false-positive mammogram could be an indicator of underlying pathology that could result in breast cancer, according to a study published April 5 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

The American College of Radiology (ACR) and the Society of Breast Imaging (SBI) have responded to a study in the Annals of Internal Medicine which concluded that 15 to 25 percent of cancers in the Norwegian mammography screening program are overdiagnosed, saying those overdiagnosis rates are overestimated, according to a statement on ACRs website.

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) used its standard competitive review processes and criteria to select the recipients of comparative effectiveness research (CER) grants and contracts using American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (Recovery Act) funds, according to a report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) published in February.