Easing clinician burden under the payment tracks implemented as part of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) will be a priority for CMS in this year’s rulemaking, according to Kate Goodrich, MD, the agency’s chief medical officer. What won’t be changing, however, is requiring providers to meet the 2015 edition of certified electronic health record technology (CHERT) standards.

The new push for easier patient access to their health data from CMS will require some work on the part of the Office of National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC), with the agency’s leaders not being shy about supporting its patient-centric goals in a briefing with reporters at HIMSS18 in Las Vegas.

When Indiana’s Goshen Health decided to de-affiliate from Indiana University Health in 2016, it knew its supply costs were going to increase for its 122-bed hospital, cancer center and 27 physician practice locations, according to chief financial officer Amy Floria. That meant waste in the supply chain had to be cut out—like the 80 percent of hospital supplies which had sat untouched on a shelf for two years.

Patients with disabilities or living in poverty have poorer health outcomes and higher costs. Theoretically, alternative payment models (APMs) could encourage providers to better coordinate care for vulnerable populations and improve their outcomes—but they also have the potential to harm these patients, according to Karen Joynt Maddox, MD, MPH, assistant professor of medicine at Washington University in St. Louis.

The My HealthE Data initiative announced by CMS at HIMSS18 earned favorable reactions from health IT professionals at the conference. When it comes to actually allowing patients to access and share their health data, however, some companies which profit from the current “friction-filled health data sharing economy” will resist, according to former U.S. chief technology officer Aneesh Chopra.

Heuristics, or mental shortcuts based on past experiences, can help decisionmakers get things done at a rapid rate—but they can also lead to cognitive bias and significant mistakes. A new study published in the American Journal of Roentgenology examined how heuristics and cognitive bias impact image interpretation in radiology.

Women outpaced men in medical school enrollment for the first time in 2017, but a new report shows they’re entering a profession where the gender pay gap is only growing.

Bibb Allen Jr., MD, department of radiology at Grandview Medical Center in Birmingham, Alabama, served as the 2016-2017 president of the American College of Radiology (ACR) and delivered the presidential address at the ACR 2017 Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C.