Turns out there’s more to the process of deciding which studies to publish in top medical journals than simply peer review and the selections of sage editors. At the New England Journal of Medicine, editors conducted around a half-dozen informal polls in the past year to help them assess the worthiness of a particular research question, according to... »

Tom Scully, the outspoken former head of Medicare, recently said that one of the biggest mistakes policymakers made when redesigning the physician payment system in the early 1990s was giving the American Medical Association control over the Relative Value Scale Update Committee or the RUC.

The RUC, which is as controversial as it is unknown, is... »

The rich tradition of Jewish involvement in the medical profession is the subject of an exhibit now showing at New York’s Yeshiva University Museum. Trail of the Magic Bullet: The Jewish Encounter with Modern Medicine, 1860-1960 explores the social, cultural, religious, and scientific aspects of that relationship during the era of modern medicine.

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Health officials are encouraging doctors who support the health law to help save it. By telling patients about how the Affordable Care Act will benefit them and the entire system, physicians can help garner support for the ACA, said Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of Health and Human Services.

"The notion that [you] are going to share factual information... »

Opponents of the Affordable Care Act are hoping that the Supreme Court will soon invalidate the law and put a permanent end to the federal government’s expanded role in health care. But one Capitol Hill watcher says the defeat of the ACA by the high court could lead to something conservatives would like even less – single-payer health care. Well, not... »

When researchers reported earlier this week at the American College of Cardiology’s annual meeting results from the TRA 2P-TIMI 50 trial, which tested a novel anticoagulant drug, vorapaxar, for preventing cardiovascular death, myocardial infarction (MI), and stroke in stable patients with cardiovascular disease, the results showed a questionable balance... »

What a difference a few years, and a new generation, has meant for the fortunes of drug-eluting coronary stents.

In the late summer of 2006, at that year’s meeting of the European Society of Cardiology, the specter of stent thrombosis first rose around the drug eluting coronary stents of that era, the sirolimus- and paclitaxel-eluting devices. The... »