Prepare for the board exam in the luxury of the Renaissance Orlando Hotel Airport, Orlando, FL

Training Faculty

Nobert Wilke, MD, FACC, FESC, FSCCT
Jim Adams, MD, FACC
Manuel Arreola, PhD, DABR
Jeff Fine, PhD

Comprehensive CME Course Features

• Special focus on how to answer all the CT physics questions
• Covers all technical aspects of Cardiac CTA including dedicated, clinical protocol discussions and question based tutorial not well covered by other reviews.
• Examination, through didactic lectures, image based case examples and review of the research literature in cardiovascular CT
• Interactive imaging review sessions and self-assessment questions aimed to pass the CBCCT Board the first time.
• Simulated Board exam style – including an interactive audience response system

Course dates: August 28-29, 2010

Saturday 7:00 am – 7:30 pm
Sunday 7:30 am – 7:00 pm

More information…

In association with Cardiovascular Associates of Marin & SF and the Cardiac CT Network

Full level 2 training or 50 case update

Learn CTA in beautiful Larkspur, CA just across the Golden Gate Bridge

The Best Price Anywhere

Dr. Jim Adams is a leader in CTA Training with over fifteen years of experience. A pioneer of Cardiac CTA Protocols, Dr. Adams has performed thousands of CTA angiograms and lectured nationally and internationally on Cardiac CTA applications. He is committed to making CTA training affordable and because he believes that the technology is essential.

Read about Dr. Adams’ pricing philosophy and learn about Cardiac CTA training at the most affordable price anywhere.

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Don’t get left behind!!

Cardiac CTA is here to stay.

Cardiovascular Imaging Center Associates is presenting its Cardiac CTA Training Course this April in beautiful Marin County, California.

Additional Courses

• Board Review Course May 15th and 16th , Orlando, FL
• Board Review Course August 28th and 29th , Orlando, FL
• Board Review Course September 11th and 12th , San Francisco, CA
  

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Who should take this course? What will be covered?

CVIC Associates offers levels 2 and 3 CTA Training courses for cardiologists and radiologists. Courses are specifically designed toward satisfying the ACC-AHA guideline requirements for all levels of CTA certification (1, 2 and 3). Very soon, Cardiac CTA Training will require formal fellowship training. All the more reason to register now.

In addition to learning how to perform and read studies, students will also learn the very important IT aspects of how to incorporate CTA scanning into a private practice. Click here for more detailed information about the course agenda and live cases.

Pricing and Course Options

The lowest prices anywhere! (early bird registration earns $100 discount on any program)

Note: Special discounts available for fellows and former course participants.

Contact us to find out more about the right package for you.

Top Advantages of Dr. Adams’ CTA training course (versus competitors’ courses)

1. The total price for training is the lowest anywhere when transportation, lodging and time away from your clinical practice is calculated.
2. Every participant has his or her own workstation.
3. Classes are small (6 to 10 people maximum) with extensive individual attention and interaction with each participant.
4. Cases are reviewed at a real imaging center where live cases are performed throughout the course.
5. All cases have a clinical history with clinical correlations and follow-up data including cath and interventional videos.
6. The course is taught by a beeper-carrying, clinical cardiologist and his associates, who are all actively involved in ongoing direct patient care.
7. Dr. Adams has over 15 years of experience teaching CTA including a low dose cardiac CTA protocol at (<1.0 mSv) using standard equipment.
8. Dr. Adams also teaches LV Perfusion and 4-D cine imaging CTA protocols, the development of which he helped pioneer over 10 years ago.
9. IT aspects of image file transfer, processing and storage with emphasis on remote reading are directly demonstrated.
10. The hotel setting is also relaxed, inexpensive, and next to the Larkspur ferry terminal and Larkspur Landing shopping center, which features excellent restaurants and free parking.
11. Wine country access is less than an hour’s drive away and direct game-day ferries access is available to the SF Giants ballpark.
12. Airport access is direct, easy and inexpensive ($20) via the Marin Airporter, which leaves every half hour and goes directly to SFO from the hotel.
13. The training office is next to the scanning center and has an extensive textbook teaching case library and data sets that is available for after-hours work and later use with any revisits to the area.
14. Post course contact and consultative follow-up is available with discounted pricing for future courses and for help with Level 2 and Board certification applications.
15. Learning cardiac CTA is guaranteed to be fun and invigorating and is an experience you will never forget!

CONTACT US

Please feel free to reach out to us directly with any questions about courses, pricing or travel. We keep classes small (limit 12 per class) so both Dr. Adams and his staff are easily accessible to all students.

Dr. Jim Adams, Instructor
jadamsmd@comcast.net
(415) 298-0666

Course Administrator:
Hilary@CTA-Training.com
(415) 691-6096

1. The total price for training is the lowest anywhere when transportation, lodging and time away from your clinical practice is calculated.
    
2. Every participant has his or her own workstation.
    
3. Classes are small (6 to 10 people maximum) providing extensive individual attention and interaction for each participant.
4. Cases are reviewed at a real imaging center where live cases are performed throughout the course.
    
5. All cases have a clinical history with clinical correlations and follow-up data including cath and interventional videos.
    
6. The course is taught by a beeper-carrying, clinical cardiologist and his associates, who are all actively involved in ongoing direct patient care.
    
7. Dr. Adams has over 15 years of experience teaching CTA including a low dose cardiac CTA protocol at (<1.0 mSv) using standard equipment.
    
8. Dr. Adams also teaches LV Perfusion and 4-D cine imaging CTA protocols, the development of which he helped pioneer over 10 years ago.
    
9. IT aspects of image file transfer, processing and storage with emphasis on remote reading are directly demonstrated.
    
10. The hotel setting is relaxed, inexpensive, and next to the Larkspur ferry terminal and Larkspur Landing shopping center, which features excellent restaurants and free parking.
     
11. Wine country access is less than an hour’s drive away and direct game-day ferries are available to the SF Giants ballpark.
     
12. Airport access is direct, easy and inexpensive ($20) via the Marin Airporter, which leaves every half hour and goes directly to SFO from the hotel.
     
13. The training office is next to the scanning center and has an extensive textbook teaching case library and data sets available for after-hours work and later use with any revisits to the area.
     
14. Post-course contact and consultative follow-up is available with discounted pricing for future courses and for help with Level 2 and Board certification applications.
     
15. Learning cardiac CTA is guaranteed to be fun and invigorating and is an experience you will never forget!
     

Learn more about our Courses and Register Now!

“Why pay more for less” by Dr. Jim Adams

Why is it so expensive to receive Cardiac CTA (CCTA) training?

The simple answer to this question is that it doesn’t – and overall shouldn’t – have to cost as much as is currently being charged by most facilities. The high costs of CTA training programs currently on the market has less to do with actual costs of training and much more to do with the desire of the entrepreneurs involved to make as much money as possible. And to my way of thinking, that’s okay. Simply put, it is supply and demand, and if it isn’t worth it, then don’t do it.

So what are the real costs involved in conducting Cardiac CTA training?

Beside the costs of the workstations, rent, utilities, and a small advertising budget and support staff, my biggest costs for CTA training are:

1. The extra time it takes to assemble the cases and organize information in a coherent way – which is a lot of work but also a lot of fun!
2. The same high cost of lost patient billing time, as is the case for course participants as well.

Beginning in 2005 when there was an initial high demand for training and reduced availability of training sites there were some very high charges for CTA courses. In some cases this was between $12 – 15,000 for level 2 training. Subsequently with the Deficit Reduction Act (DRA) and the Medicare and insurance company reimbursement cuts and restrictions, the potential for profitability of Cardiac CTA scanning fell and the enthusiasm and demand for training dampened. However, less demand has led to reduced CTA training fees. Eventually as the July 2010 deadline for grandfathered training gets closer, demand will increase again and prices may rise.

How low can and should the costs of training go?

Just like with stocks, the price of cardiac CTA training depends on the market place and consumer expectations and demand. It will also depend on the quality. If you believe, as I do, that Cardiac CTA scanning is a very useful technique and is here stay, then the short term bureaucratic limitations placed on the technique shouldn’t matter. CTA scanning will eventually be used and ‘rediscovered’ as being useful. In that case, learning the Cardiac CTA technique and how to incorporate it into one’s practice is an eventuality rather than a possibility. And learning how to ‘do it right’ becomes a necessity.

That being said, I have designed my cardiac and cardiac CTA (CCTA) training classes to offer the best quality training at the least possible cost anywhere. Based in a large private cardiology practice in beautiful Marin County, California, just north of the Golden Gate Bridge, my courses offer an enjoyable setting in which to work hard and thoroughly learn this new and highly valuable technique of Cardiac CTA. We are committed to quality, not just in our scanning protocols but also in the teaching. After working for over ten years with Dr. Doug Boyd, inventor of the EBCT scanner, which up until recently was the only cardiac CTA scanner available, my group several years ago finally incorporated MDCT scanning into our clinical practice. And we are making good money at it, too.

In 2005, after years of doing applications training for electron beam angiography (EBA) I saw the need for quality training in Cardiac CTA, and I began offering live, totally case-based training at our outpatient scanning center. I also opened a Cardiac CTA training center office in the building next to our office that is full of workstations and teaching materials with a small kitchen. When we are not in the scanning center we are across the street reviewing cases on the workstations and over the internet.  We provide a very relaxed setting in which to learn with small classes of five to ten participants including fellows. Our courses are small, focused, intense training in a busy but very enjoyable and relaxed setting in an extremely nice part of the world.

Our CTA scanning center is a joint venture, Stark compliant L.L.C. with our urology and oncology-cancer care group. We have two electro physiologists in our group who perform close to four hundred pulmonary vein ablation procedures yearly with spectacular results. (They are rated number three in the world by an independent firm). We also have three vascular surgeons and one cardiologist fully trained in peripheral vascular interventions. Hence, our center is very busy and routinely scans twenty or more patients daily for a variety of diagnostic reasons. We believe that the best way to learn Cardiac CTA is by watching and participating in a busy scanning center like ours.

Training in cardiac CTA (CCTA) has a steep learning curve. While workstations have gotten progressively quicker and more accurate in their ability to process very large data sets generated by a full CTA study, in the foreseeable future they will not attain a level that will be free of artifacts and, inherent from that, prone to misinterpretation by the untrained or poorly trained eye. Thus, there can be no substitute for learning the fundamentals of Cardiac CTA and knowing full well how artifacts are generated and propagated. The minimum requirement for attaining competence at processing and interpreting Cardiac CTA has been published in the joint ACC-ACC statement on training. The bottom line on Cardiac CTA training is that it requires lots of hands-on-the-mouse training with a mentor who is skilled in all aspects of image acquisition, information reformatting and data transfer, as well as with image processing, reporting and storage.

And as I said, there is absolutely no substitute for watching and participating in a busy Cardiac CTA scanning center like ours for really learning how to do Cardiac CTA and how to best incorporate it into your clinical practice. At our training center you are always welcome to come back for a very reasonable fee, and if you really are not satisfied with your training, I am committed to providing free training until you are. I see Cardiac CTA training as a shared commitment to excellence and one that does not end with having just met the minimum requirements.

So, finally, why should you pay more for less to get this training? If you do, then that is your choice. But you should know the alternatives and in the end decide and take advantage of what works best for you. I really enjoy teaching, but I also really most enjoy taking care of patients. And there is no greater joy in medicine than using a new and innovative technique like Cardiac CTA to take better care of one’s patients. And as prior participants can tell you that have taken my classes, I will always look forward to sharing this same excitement with you.

James R. Adams, MD, FACC