The U.S. Senate yesterday passed legislation that will delay the date of a 21.2 percent Medicare payment cut to physicians until Oct.1.

While the rates of hospitalization for Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries with acute MI (AMI) have dropped significantly between 2002 and 2007, researchers found that these rates varied based on demographics, particularly race and gender, according to a study published online March 8 in Circulation.

A survey of 1,022 Michiganders revealed a gap between insurance coverage and access to healthcare, and the Center for Healthcare Research & Transformation suggests that lawmakers must focus on closing this gap.

Four chief information officers, who are also members of the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME), testified before the Implementation Workgroup federal panel this week on the challenges they foresee in implementing EHRs, under the current definition outlined in the interim final rule of meaningful use.

Partial adoption of meaningful use of health IT should result in the receiving of partial fiscal incentives, wrote Ted Epperly, MD, board chair of the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), in a letter to Charlene M. Frizzera, acting administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

John R. Adler, Jr., MD, professor of neurosurgery and radiation oncology at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., has been named vice president and chief of new clinical applications for Varian Medical Systems, effective April 5.

According to a recent study published in the March 8 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, prostate cancer patients who visit a urologist with or without a medical oncologist consultation are treated more frequently with hormone therapy, watchful waiting or a radical prostatectomy, while those who visit a radiation oncologist appear more likely to receive radiation therapy for the treatment of their disease.

An Arkansas widower has filed a class action lawsuit against Lester E. Cox Medical Centers in the case involving the overradiation of 76 patients with brain cancer at CoxHealth of Springfield, Mo.