Imaging Penalties Proposed
The Senate Finance Committee is proposing a “lower payment for ordering physicians who were determined to be outliers for inappropriate ordering” of imaging. The Department of Health and Human Services would work with national groups to create appropriateness criteria for imaging services. The Senate committee envisioned a monitoring system that would report how imaging is being used. Among other options is the use of radiology benefit managers. In a written statement, the Access to Medical Imaging Coalition endorsed the committee's plan to create and promote appropriateness criteria and a proposal to establish a network to give physicians access to patients' previous imaging studies. But the coalition “remains very concerned” about radiology benefit managers.
IAEA Seeks Radiology Protection
The International Atomic Energy Agency is developing measures to protect patients from what it deems an alarming growth in radiation exposure from imaging procedures. “The medical application of ionizing radiation is the fastest growing source” of exposure, Renate Czarwinski, head of IAEA's radiation and safety monitoring section, said in a statement. The collective radiation dose to the world's population has increased 17% in the past 10 years, according to the IAEA. The agency is developing a “smart card” to log how much radiation each person receives over a lifetime. The agency also seeks to identify factors that contribute to unnecessary doses.
Women Seek Hypertension Tx
Hypertension was the most common condition for which women sought treatment in 2006, according to the Agency for Health Research and Quality. That year, 25 million women sought treatment for high blood pressure. Seeking treatment for mental disorders was common in women aged 64 or younger. For instance, 8.3 million women aged 45–64, and 5 million aged 30–44, sought treatment for depression or other mental disorders in 2006. After hypertension, hyperlipidemia was the most common condition for which women over 65 sought treatment (7.1 million in 2006).
PhRMA Revises Trial Standards
The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America has revised its voluntary standards for how drug manufacturers run clinical trials and communicate results. The new standards call on drug makers to register on a Web site all interventional clinical trials, including some phase I studies. Companies must “greatly expand transparency in medical research” by providing summaries of results from all interventional clinical trials, regardless of whether the research is discontinued or the medication being studied is ever approved. The standards also call for drug makers to adopt the authorship standards of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, which indicate that only individuals who make substantial contributions to a manuscript be included as authors.