This session will begin with a brief overview of the structure of the ambulatory payment classifications (APCs) in the Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment System (HOPPS) as it relates to radiology procedures and studies in 2011.

Enrollment in U.S. clinical trials is waning, forcing many to offshore clinical research to international participants, according to study results published Aug. 9 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Researchers urged that future research must assess why underenrollment in U.S. trials is so prevalent and an accompanying editorial questioned whether U.S. clinical research has become so expensive and inefficient that it is no longer a viable competitive enterprise.

BOSTONWhy did healthcare reform pass in 2010after various versions had failed to pass for decades? Because it finally had to. So said Jamie Orlikoff, president of Orlikoff & Associates of Chicago, in Tuesdays general session of the 2011 Association for Healthcare Resource and Materials Management (AHRMM) annual conference.

BOSTONA faltering economy, coupled with loss of consumer confidence and the added pressure of healthcare reform has created a perfect storm in the healthcare industry; thereby, increasing the need for supply stream improvement to help manage costs, according to presenters Aug. 8 at the 2011 Association for Healthcare Resources & Materials Management (ARHMM) annual conference.

A combination of well-known safety procedures could prevent most patient-harming errors in radiation therapy, according to a study presented at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) and Canadian Organization of Medical Physicists, July 31 to Aug. 4 in Vancouver, Canada.

The success of the National Lung Screening Trial (NLST) has not closed the book on lung cancer screening. Instead, it has spurred a host of questions related to overdiagnosis, costs and the potential for other screening methods, according to an article and editorial published Aug. 4 in New England Journal of Medicine. NLST researchers and the editorialist reached the same conclusion: screening CT is not ready for prime time.

The U.S. Supreme Court recently declared unconstitutional Vermonts law, which restricted detailing, the transferring and use of physician-identifiable prescribing data, that had been challenged by Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. Prescription drug intermediaries (PDIs) and a pharmaceutical manufacturers association challenged Vermonts law as a restriction to free speech on the basis of an expressed viewpoint. An article in the Aug. 3 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine shows that data mining reports created by PDIs and then later sold to pharmaceutical companies show a physicians prescribing behavior and whether the physician is an early or late medicine adopter.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced Aug. 4 that Medicare average prescription drug premiums will not increase in 2012.