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In 1982, doctors told Jackie Smith’s parents to take the 3-year-old girl home and enjoy her while they could. Her rare muscle disease, likely passed on from a mutation in her parents’ DNA, would probably kill her before she was old enough to drive, they said. Smith, now 35, has lived in the shadow of that diagnosis her whole life, as a small army of physicians failed to diagnose what accounts for her weak limbs and turned-in ankles. This past February, Claritas Genomics gave her the answer in less than three weeks. (Cortez, 9/10)

Inch by inch, two doctors working side by side in an operating room guide a long narrow tube through a patient’s femoral artery, from his groin into his beating heart. They often look intently, not down at the 81-year-old patient, but up at a 60-inch monitor above him that’s streaming pictures of his heart made from X-rays and sound waves. The big moment comes 40 minutes into the procedure at Morton Plant Hospital. Dr. Joshua Rovin unfurls from the catheter a metal stent containing a new aortic valve that is made partly out of a pig’s heart and expands to the width of a quarter outside the catheter. The monitor shows it fits well over the old one. Blood flow is normal again. "This is pretty glorious," Rovin said. (Galewitz, 9/11)

Time for a pop quiz: When it comes to health care, what’s the difference between cost, charge and payment? "Does anyone want to take a stab at it?" Sara-Megumi Naylor asks a group of first-year residents at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. Naylor answers her own question with a car metaphor. "Producing the car might be $10,000, but the price on the window might be $20,000, and then you might end up giving them [a deal for] $18,000, so that’s cost versus charge versus payment," she explains. (Plevin, 9/10)

A new model of health care run by doctors and hospitals is growing and saving money in the taxpayer-funded Medicare program, according to a new report from the federal government. However, experts say most patients still don’t understand how an Accountable Care Organization works. And while early data shows financial improvements, experts say it’s too early to know the long-term financial impact. (Kennedy, 9/10)

In some cases, doctors and hospitals work with patients to consolidate treatments, tests and consultations that might otherwise take place during separate appointments. But there are other times when what seems logical to a patient doesn’t make sense to the doctor. (Crane, 9/11)