There are an additional two new questions this month. Readers, do you have any questions that you would like to ask our discussion group? Perhaps about how a difficult case should have been handled or about the upcoming ICD registry? In the email discussion group, feel free to be listed as “name withheld” or “anonymous”. Our members are located all over the country, so you can share your questions with a wide range of professionals and see how other labs handle similar issues.

A new system for at-home monitoring of ICD-CRT patients is about to become available. The Latitude^® Patient Monitoring System, manufactured by Guidant, Inc., utilizes wireless telemetry to perform interrogations and programming. This newest advance in technology brings with it some unique implications for quality patient care.

Recently, patient Cristina Pohrib presented at New York Hospital Queens (NYHQ). This 52-year-old seamstress was experiencing chest pains, and later received emergency quintuple bypass surgery. As a result, she became the first beneficiary of NYHQ’s partnership with The Larry King Cardiac Foundation, a program that provides funding for life-saving cardiac procedures for patients with limited means and/or no insurance (these individuals are generally classified as “working poor,” and do not qualify for state or federal assistance). In this article, I had the opportunity to speak with both Larry King, Jr., President of The Larry King Cardiac Foundation, and well as Mark Adkins, MD, who treated Ms. Pohrib, about this new partnership.

St. Francis Medical Center is a busy acute care teaching hospital which has consistently been recognized as top ranking for the outcome of cardiac surgery procedures and for the lowest mortality in the state. Dr. Glenn Laub, who is the Chairman of the Cardiothoracic Surgery Department at St. Francis, recently saw a 19% increase in his department’s monthly collections. His department was able to achieve this with the help of Affinity Billing, a third-party billing service which consolidates billing services, tracks payer performance from a single point of control, shares Medicare compliance rules globally and much more. For tips on how to improve the efficiency of your department’s medical billing, keep reading.

This year, approximately 350,000–400,000 deaths will occur as a result of sudden cardiac death. Nearly 4 million people will experience or develop cardiac arrhythmias. As a progressive and innovative cardiology practice, The Iowa Clinic Heart and Vascular Care needs the best possible technology to assist in the diagnosis and treatment of arrhythmia patients.