Pfizer gave more than $10 million to a charity for heart patients while dramatically increasing the price of one of its antiarrhythmic drugs, deflecting costs from patients and leaving Medicare with a bigger bill, the U.S. Justice Department said in a May 24 settlement statement.

CMS had requested comments on allowing direct provider contracting (DPC) with Medicare beneficiaries in the form of the alternative payment model. Among major healthcare groups, the response was decidedly mixed, ranging from cautious optimism to telling CMS to focus on other payment reforms.

Nearly one-third of integrated interventional radiology residency programs lack a web presence, researchers reported in the American Journal of Roentgenology this month—and they could be missing out on recruiting the next generation of radiologists.

Hospitals will be expected to perform fewer unnecessary C-sections, cut down on imaging procedures for lower back pain and prescribe fewer opioids. If they don’t do so by the end of 2019, Covered California will try to get participating health insurers to exclude those hospitals from their networks.

Adopting a nonrandom peer review process—and abandoning the ACR’s widely accepted RADPEER approach—could identify far more diagnostic errors in imaging studies and afford radiologists an opportunity to learn from theirs and their peers’ mistakes, researchers suggest in the current edition of the Journal of the American College of Radiology.

Breast pain impacts more than half of all women and affects the quality of life of 41 percent of women. Healthcare resources are overutilized to treat these patients, according to a new study published in the American Journal of Roentgenology, suggesting imaging providers should pay closer attention to recommended protocols and referring physicians may need additional education.

DUBLIN — May 24, 2018 — Medtronic plc (NYSE: MDT) today announced financial results for its fourth quarter and fiscal year 2018, which ended April 27.

In a systemwide change, Brian Dean, MPH, MBA, will become the new CFO for Memorial Hermann.