Policy

Although there has been a concentrated focus on pulmonary vascular diseases at this year's CHEST conference, there have also been a number of studies released that pertain to cardiovascular events, such as congestive heart failure, atrial fibrillation, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Here are some of the highlights in these areas.

As one might expect, lung cancer is one of the major focuses at each CHEST conference. The following are highlights from this year's recently released abstracts and late-breaking studies.

Although there have been a wide variety of disease states covered at this year's CHEST conference, much of the focus has been on those under the umbrella of pulmonary vascular disease, such as pulmonary arterial hypertension and deep vein thrombosis. Here are some of the new study highlights related to pulmonary vascular disease.

Robert Frantz, MD, FACC, Director, Pulmonary Hypertension Clinic, Mayo Clinic, says that the issue of cost is an important factor in treating patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension.

Fecal immunochemical testing resulted in higher colorectal cancer screening rates than did guaiac fecal occult blood tests, with less dependence on office visits.

The following are highlights of abstracts that focus on readmission rates, an increasingly important subject for hospitals that are subject to evolving rules and regulations as they relate to reimbursement.

Integration of written-prescription data into medication adherence measures doubled the number of patients identified as nonadherent and improved prediction of follow-up LDL cholesterol.

Financial incentives may not be strong enough to influence physician goal commitment to guideline-recommended hypertension care when providers attribute performance to forces beyond their control.

The frailty determination of the Adjusted Clinical Groups“diagnoses based predictive model identified frail elders with moderate success compared with a validated screening questionnaire.

Cost has been front of mind for many researchers that have released new study data at CHEST 2012. Here are some of the highlights from the new research.

In this video, Aimee Tharaldson, PharmD, Senior Clinical Consultant, Emerging Therapeutics Express Scripts, Inc, talks about the impact that biosimilar medications could potentially have on the specialty pharmacy market.

Patient-centered medical home practices provided better preventive care and disease management with less resource utilization than practices not pursuing PCMH status.

Competitive bidding characterizes market-based proposals to control Medicare spending, but in this first empirical study of bidding in Medicare, we find that competition is lacking.

Modest increases in adherence to medication regimens among Medicare patients with heart failure were associated with lower Medicare spending in 3 major drug classes.