The 21.2 percent cut in Medicare reimbursement officially goes into effect today, but the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a guidance Friday that will delay its effects for two weeks, or until the U.S. Senate acts on a bill delaying the cut.

Embedding clinical images into radiology reports can not only save time, but can increase physician confidence in selecting treatment plans for the patient and enhance radiologists communication with referring physicians, said a study published online today in the March issue of the Journal of the American College of Radiology (JACR).

Washington, D.C.David J. Cohen, MD, director of cardiovascular research at St. Lukes Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City, Mo., evaluated the economics of drug-eluting stents (DES) versus bare-metal stents (BMS), along with what has recently changed in clinical practice to influence their costeffectiveness, during a session on Feb. 22 at the annual conference of the Cardiovascular Research Technologies.

The FDA and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have begun a collaborative effort in which the agencies will establish a Joint NIH-FDA Leadership Council to work on important public health issues, further scientific efforts and make innovative medical therapies available to patients, said the agencies.

A Missouri hospital overradiated 76 patients with brain cancer between 2004 and 2009 because of an error in the calibration of an advanced radiation therapy system.

During the Health IT Standards Committee meeting on Feb. 24 in Washington, D.C., the Clinical Operations Workgroup sought to gather comments on proposed recommendations on implementation specifications for content exchange, vocabulary and code set standards for the Interim Final Rule of meaningful use.

In the past 20 years, Medicare expenditures are increasingly going toward treating and managing chronic conditions. But according to a report published online in the Feb. 18 issue of Health Affairs, U.S. policy makers have inadequately adjusted to these trends and need to better implement prevention and treatment programs.

A study of Medicare beneficiaries admitted to U.S. hospitals with congestive heart failure (CHF) showed no definitive connection between the cost and quality of care, or between cost and death rates. The research was published Feb. 22 in the Archives of Internal Medicine.