Colleagues,

 

Seeking Your Involvement

As our Board of Trustees election approaches, I would like to ask for your involvement; it is always great to see new faces. The board is seeking nominations in the following districts: Columbus area (private practice), Dayton area (private practice), the University of Cincinnati, and the Cleveland Clinic. Please email our Chapter office if you are interested in serving or would like to recommend a colleague: ohioacc@gmail.com.

  

New Heart Failure (HF) Performance Measures Released

I wanted to share the following information with you that I received from the ACC Leadership Update:

 

"The ACC, along with the American Heart Association (AHA) and the American Medical Association-Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement, released updated performance measures for adults with heart failure (HF). The 2011 performance measures include care provided in both the outpatient and inpatient setting, emphasizing the need to measure care quality over time and across providers, while also focusing on functional outcomes.

 

Among the significant updates to the 2011 measures set is the expansion of the beta-blocker measure to the inpatient, as well as the conversion of the measure on patient education to a quality metric, which should be used for internal quality improvement purposes only, not public reporting. Other changes to the measures include the combination of both the inpatient and outpatient settings in a measure about the use of ACE inhibitors or ARB therapy for left ventricular systolic dysfunction; the addition of a new measure on the post-discharge appointment at the time of hospital discharge; and the retirement of measures on weight measurement, blood pressure measurement, and warfarin therapy for patients with atrial fibrillation.  Get more details on the new measures.

 

The College is using the timing of this release to promote several resources designed to help CV professionals use guidelines and performance measures at the point of care. These tools include the Heart Failure Practice Solutions Toolkit, which provides easy access to tools that allow cardiovascular professionals and others to brush up on guideline recommendations for HF care, as well as the Hospital to Home (H2H) Initiative. In addition, the following Heart Failure Checklist was released as part of a Late-Breaking Clinical Trial at ACC.12 in Chicago."

 

Christopher J. Cooper, MD, FACC

President

 

CMS has developed a support page to help providers with Medicare e-prescribing payment adjustment hardship exemption requests. Medicare Part B Physician Fee Schedule payment adjustments are underway for those eligible professionals who did not initiate e-prescribing in 2011. Penalties of one percent kicked-in Jan.1 and will increase to two percent by the end of 2014 for providers who fail to comply. However, if you did not e-prescribe in 2011 and qualify for a hardship exemption, you can avoid the 2013 payment adjustment by meeting a set of reporting requirements by June 30. Visit the Health IT Issue Center on CardioSource.org for additional information. Also be sure to check the ACC in Touch Blog every Thursday throughout the month of May for tips "from the field" and expert advice on how to avoid health IT-related penalties and benefit from both the e-prescribing and electronic health record incentive programs.

The FDA has approved safety label changes for statins, which include eliminating the requirement for routine monitoring of liver enzymes from the drug labels and adding information about the potential for generally non-serious and reversible cognitive side effects and reports of increased blood sugar and HbA1c levels. Also, the label for lovastatin has been updated with new contraindications and dose limitations when it is taken with certain medicines that can increase the risk for muscle injury. Health care professionals should follow the recommendations in the lovastatin label regarding drugs that may increase the risk of myopathy/rhabdomyolysis when used with lovastatin.

The FDA continues to recommend health care professionals perform liver enzyme tests before initiating statin therapy in patients and as clinically indicated thereafter. Read more.

View the series here.

 

 The ACC has released a list of "Five Things Physicians and Patients Should Question" in cardiology as
part of the Choosing Wisely campaign, led by the ABIM Foundation with eight other medical specialty
societies.

Read more.

 

Save the date!

22nd Annual Meeting and inaugural
Richard P. Lewis Memorial Lecture on Saturday, October 13
Find out more.