Ten health systems have been tapped as the best by Thomson Reuters for providing paramount care--better outcomes, survival and patient satisfaction--over their peers. The results were published May 31 in Thomson Reuters third annual "10 Top Health Systems" study.

Telemedicine has been touted as a promising strategy to increase the efficiency of ICUs. While patients needs and costs of adult critical care continue to rise, the benefits of a tele-ICU intervention may be associated with lower mortality and shorter length of stay, in addition to stricter adherence to best practices, according to a study published in the June 1 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Siemens Healthcare has received the CE mark for its Biograph mMR system, a whole-body molecular MR with simultaneous MR and PET data acquisition technology.

Nightingale Informatix has partnered with ExpeData to launch Clinipen, an integrated digital writing tool that healthcare providers can use to input structured data into a patient's EMR directly from paper.

After the Senate knocked down the House of Representatives bid to dramatically shrink Medicare, bipartisan leadership of the House Subcommittee on Health is now urging the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission to reconsider its move to plug holes in the Stark Law and limit reimbursement for self-referred imaging.

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Department of Public Welfare, has renewed IT company CGI's contract for $44.9 million to help prevent, detect, deter and correct improper provider payments within Pennsylvania's Medicaid Medical Assistance program.

The early measurement of coronary flow reserve (CRF) by transthoracic Doppler echocardiography can be of high value for the assessment of successful reperfusion in acute MI and can be used to predict left ventricular functional recovery, myocardial viability and the final infarct size, according to a study published online May 28 in Cardiovascular Ultrasound.

One of the missing links in the diagnosis of autism is a non-invasive, objective diagnostic test that can be applied as early as possible to allow physicians to develop an intervention plan. Passive auditory stimulation during a functional MRI (fMRI) exam may provide that key, according to results of a forthcoming study to be published in the July issue of Radiology.