Hot Topics
NEW Spotlight Session—Practice Innovation: Driving Revenue, Quality, and Value

• New STEMI guidelines
• Top five recommendations on improving healthcare
• Appropriateness criteria in cardiovascular imaging
• Future payment models
• Projections on physician reimbursement
• Top Speakers including: Donald M. Berwick, M.D, M.P.P., F.R.C.P., Troy A. Brennan, M.D., J.D., M.P.H., Carolyn Clancy, M.D. and Alice G. Gosfield, Esq.

Guidelines and Controversies

• Perioperative cardiovascular evaluation before noncardiac surgery: Which patients should have stress testing? Which patients need coronary revascularization? What is the status of perioperative beta blocker and statin therapies?
• Management of STEMI and NSTEMI: Interventional strategies, antithrombotic options for NSTEMI, timing of reperfusion therapy and adjunctive therapies for STEMI
• Perspective from the British Cardiovascular Society

Improving Practice with Publicly Reported Quality Measures

• Practical sessions on how to achieve quality goals
• Improving 30-day mortality in patients hospitalized for heart failure and MI
• Update on the Door-to-Balloon Alliance, including novel insights into top performance, the importance of teamwork in making change, and getting the job done with regional networks

Important Issues
Disparities in Care
Attend the Joint symposium of the Association of Black Cardiologists/American College of Cardiology and learn about:

• The influence of race and ethnicity on cardiovascular outcomes
• Challenges in imaging women and under-represented minorities
• Unique aspects of dyslipidemia in African Americans
• The relationship between chronic stress, cardiovascular disease, and ethnicity

Cardiovascular Imaging
Hear from experts in echocardiography, nuclear medicine, angiography, quality improvement and outcomes research on:

• Quality indicators in cardiovascular imaging
• How to standardized reporting
• How to minimize inter-reader variability
• Appropriateness criteria

Conflict of Interest: Too Much, Too Little, or Just Right?

• What constitutes a conflict of interest?
• Are conflict-of-interest guidelines unnecessarily intrusive?
• How should peer-reviewed journals manage conflicts of interest?

Learn from the Experts

• Pay for performance: What can be learned from the cardiac surgical experience?
• Cardiovascular data registries: Impact on clinical practice
• Closing the gap in cardiovascular disparities