{"id":33984,"date":"2013-01-08T13:46:42","date_gmt":"2013-01-08T18:46:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/?post_type=interventional&p=33984"},"modified":"2013-01-08T14:44:13","modified_gmt":"2013-01-08T19:44:13","slug":"could-you-be-accused-of-doing-unnecessary-pci","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/2013\/01\/08\/could-you-be-accused-of-doing-unnecessary-pci\/","title":{"rendered":"Could You Be Accused of Doing Unnecessary PCI?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, the Missouri licensing board urgently suspended a cardiologist <\/a>accused of implanting unnecessary stents, and an Ohio hospital and cardiology group<\/a> agreed to pay the United States government $4.4 million to settle accusations that it billed Medicare for unnecessary PCIs performed from 2001 to 2006. According to the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office<\/a>, \u201cthe claims resolved by this settlement are allegations only, and there has been no determination of liability.\u201d<\/p>\n

Were the allegedly unnecessary PCIs a function of financial incentives, professional training, or the perceived benefits of this treatment?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

We\u2019ll likely never know, but the Missouri physician is disputing the charges against him, and the founder and chairman of the Ohio cardiology group writes<\/a>, \u201c\u2026.when these decisions were made and the procedures were performed, we felt confident we were making the correct choices for our patients. \u00a0We still do\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0The hospitals didn\u2019t have a problem <\/a>with the procedures. \u00a0UnitedHealth designated the Ohio hospital as one of its \u201ccenters of excellence for heart care,\u201d and Medical Mutual of Ohio described it as \u201ca very high-quality provider,\u201d scoring well on traditional quality measures, such as the number of required rehospitalizations and complications, including mortality.<\/p>\n

Public confidence is eroding as the number of reports of physician suspensions and monetary penalties for unnecessary PCIs grow.\u00a0Accordingly, patients are questioning use of PCI, even when it is indicated and advisable.<\/p>\n

\u00a01.\u00a0 Have investigations into unnecessary stenting changed your interventional practice?\u00a0 How so?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

2.\u00a0 Has your group (or hospital) developed policies to evaluate whether PCI procedures are indicated and appropriate?\u00a0 If so, are the policies effective?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

3.\u00a0 Do you feel that investigations into unnecessary stenting should be reported publicly\u2013 including hospital and provider names – before the findings are known?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A recent rash of lawsuits and physician suspensions for “unnecessary PCI” have given many interventionalists pause. Rick Lange and David Hillis ponder the implications of these incidents on clinical practice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":214,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1034,1618,474,301,1056],"class_list":["post-33984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interventional-cardiology","tag-financial-incentives","tag-litigation","tag-medicare","tag-pci","tag-quality-outcomes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/214"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33984\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}