WASHINGTON—Too many children and adults living with congenital heart disease (CHD) are being left behind by a system that doesn’t adequately value their care. That’s the message of a new policy statement from the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography & Interventions (SCAI) that highlights broken reimbursement models, undervalued procedures, and barriers to device innovation.  

The statement, “Economic Barriers to Interventional Cardiology Care for Adults and Children With Congenital Heart Disease and Potential Policy Solutions,” was published today in JSCAI. It calls for Medicaid payment parity, fairer valuation of CHD procedures, new compensation models, and faster pathways for pediatric device approval.  

Reducing industrial animal use can help to shrink our carbon footprint and boost health—but doing so means we need nutritious meat alternatives that are also tasty and affordable.  

This is according to a new Frontiers in Science article in which researchers reveal how hybrid foods, which combine proteins from different sources, could be part of the solution.  

A major study from the University of Sydney has shown that a popular style of yoga increased falls in older people by a third, in a result that has surprised researchers.  

Patients weighing 450 pounds or more face barriers and discrimination when scheduling or attending doctor visits at subspecialty practices, reports a new Northwestern Medicine study. Of the 300 clinics surveyed in the study, 52% lacked basic standards of care and 41% declined to schedule an appointment. Otolaryngologists were the least likely to schedule a visit with the patient (only 48.3% scheduled visits, compared to 59% overall). 

Only 117 practices (39%) were fully accessible, the study found, with endocrinology practices being the most willing to schedule and most likely to meet basic standards of care.

An additional 16% of practices in the study that were willing to schedule the patient had a sub-standard plan of care that involved workarounds for accessibility limitations, such as telling the patient they could come to the clinic but would need to stand during the exam, or they would have to drape themselves with a sheet because they did not have gowns to fit them.