Results from an analysis of 7,900 providers who have opted out of Medicare between 1998 and March 2011 by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Servicess (HHS) Office of Inspector General showed that not enough data were available regarding the physicians who opted out of Medicare to conduct a proper evaluation.

The American College of Cardiology (ACC) is informing practitioners who are subject to the 2012 e-prescribing penalty that they should have already received notification from their Medicare contractor of their failure to meet the requirements for avoiding the 2012 e-prescribing payment adjustment. 

The American College of Cardiology (ACC) has joined recent efforts that call for a permanent fix to the flawed sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula.

The White House announced the departure of Aneesh Chopra, assistant to the President and the federal governments first chief technology officer (CTO).

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) announced the second part of its Investing in Innovation Initiative: a challenge that aims to stimulate the use of simple, IT-enabled processes and tools that make scheduling hospital discharge follow-up appointments easier for patients, caregivers and providers.

Patients with head and neck cancers who have been treated with intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) enjoy a better quality of life than those treated with 3D conformal radiation therapy, according to a study presented Jan. 27 at the Multidisciplinary Head and Neck Cancer Symposium in Phoenix.

When following a stringent diagnostic protocol in CT lung cancer screening, few biopsies will be recommended and performed on benign nodules, which should alleviate at least some concerns that low-dose CT screening produces a high false-positive rate, according to a study published in the February issue of the American Journal of Roentgenology.

The American Medical Association, along with a group of other healthcare trade associations, wrote a letter to House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), encouraging him to push for the repeal of the sustainable growth rate (SGR) to allow for the formation of more accurate Medicare spending estimates while also suggesting that excess baseline projections for Overseas Contingency Operations be used to help offset necessary Medicare baseline changes.