Media Reports on How Pharmaceutical Companies May Manipulate Information

Newspapers have become interested, again, in the issue of pharmaceutical companies manipulating information supplied to the public or health...

Editorial Argues Against Softening NIH Conflict of Interest Rules

The question of whether the NIH should soften its now stringent conflict of interest rules re-surfaced in an editorial in the Hartford Coura...

Should US Not-For-Profit Hospitals Lose Their Privileged Status?

The Baltimore Sun reports that both the US House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee are opening en...

A Troubling Study of the Contracts Between Medical Schools and Corporate Research Sponsors

The NEJM article about contracts for clinical trials between academic health centers (AHCs) and pharmaceutical companies mentioned in an ear...

Wall Street Journal: Medical Editor Turns Activist On Drug Trials

NEJM editor Drazen returns to the Light Side of the Force. The revelation about academic medical centers willingly accepting ghost-writing o...

"Another Guy Who Ethically Ran Amok": Bellevue Hospital Executive Fired

The New York Times reports yet another hospital chief executive leaving in disgrace. Carlos F. Perez, executive director of Bellevue Hospita...

Lawyers Sue Hospital Based on What it Advertised

Lawyers have noticed how hospitals are making exaggerated claims about their services, as reported by the Boston Globe . The story involves ...

Fewer Physicians Interested in Generalist Careers

There is more information available about the decreasing number of physicians interested in being generalists. A detailed survey based study...

Guideant's Short Circuit

The New York Times reports yet another story of flawed implantable cardiac defibrillators (ICDs). This time, Guidant Corporation revealed th...

No More Free Viagra for Sex Offenders

There are so many stories popping up now that I am having a hard time keeping up, but here goes... Unintended flaws of bureaucratic decision...

From Nevada, More on Hospitals' List Prices

The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported on the high cost of hospitalization in Nevada, where it asserted hospital charges are currently the hi...

Conflicts of Interest and Jackson Memorial Hospital's Pharmacy Contract

The latest in the hit-parade of hospital management shenanigans, highlighting issues of conflict of interest, is this story in the Miami Her...

Support for the "Endangered Primary Care MD"

An op-ed piece in the Boston Globe by Ellen Lutch Bender , the Director of Health Care Strategies for the law firm Brown Rudnick, entitled ...

Comments by Jacobi Hospital's Former Executive Director: "I Feel Really Good"

The Executive Director of Jacobi Hospital, who was fired because the hospital failed to notify hundreds of women about concerning Pap test ...

Secret Hospital "List Prices" Revealed in San Jose

A real health care market would require we have informed consumers who can make rational decisions. We have shown how some hospitals seem to...

Detroit Hospitals' Advertising War

Although pharmaceutical companies have been rightly criticized for pushing marketing rather than science, they are not the only health care ...

Questionable Deliberations on the Vagus Nerve Stimulator to Treat Severe Depression

The NY Times reports on the curious deliberations by a US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) expert advisory panel on the approval of an imp...

Jacobi Hospital's Executive Director Fired

Another quick follow-up on the story about Jacobi Hospital's failure to notify patients about abnormal pap smear results. The NY Times r...

Is the adversary model the answer?

In his post of Wed 18 May, Roy Poses commented on the PLoS article by former BMJ editor Richard Smith opining that medical journals have be...

The "Misconduct" of a Leader with "Gravitas,"

A follow-up on the story of Staten Island (NY) University Hospital's settlement of charges that it had defrauded the state Medicaid pro...

Jacobi's Missing Test Results

Another problem in New York. The Times reports how Jacobi Hospital, part of the city's Health and Hospitals Corporation, failed to notif...

Kling on the EMR

A nice discussion by Arnold Kling on Tech Central Station on pitfalls to expect on the road to electronic medical records (EMRs).... His rem...

New York Hospital Settles Fraud Charges Twice in Six Years

From the NY Times , Staten Island University Hospital has agreed to pay $76.5 million to settle claims that it fraudulantly billed the state...

"Medical Journal Are an Extension of the Marketing Arm of Pharmaceutical Companies"

In the latest PLoS Medicine is an article by Richard Smith , former editor of the British Medical Journal, with a title which expresses his ...

FBI Can't Account for its Budget to Fight Health Care Fraud

The NY Times reports that the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has been unable to account how it spent money allocated to investigat...

A Scathing Commentary on California's New Institute for Regenerative Medicine

The Los Angeles Times included a scathing commentary on California's new stem cell research agency. Author Michael Hitzik charged that ...

UK Family Doctors' Salaries

The May 14-20 issue of the Economist has a fascinating short article, entitled "Practice Makes Perfect," detailing an extraorinda...

Guilty Pleas in Another Hospital Construction Fraud Scandal

This seems to be a minor epidemic. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has reported ( here , here , and here ) on another scheme involving kickbacks...

Unintended Consequences of Reducing Junior Doctors' Hours

From the Guardian , a reminder about unintended consequences.... The UK now must limit work hours of hospital house staff to the European Un...

Guilty Plea in the Illinois Health Facilities Board Scandal

From the Chicago Sun-Times ... there has been a guilty plea in the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board scandal (see our previous post ...

"You Smoke? You're Fired"

USA Today summarizes how some companies are firing or refusing to hire workers who smoke while away from work. Meanwhile, the San Francisc...

Wall Street Journal on "Misleading [Medical] Journal Articles"

Today's Wall Street Journal has a (front page in the print edition) article that nicely summarizes some cases of a "Worrisome Ailm...

Allegations of Corruption Affecting the South's Largest Hospital

I stumbled over this story while searching for something else. It really isn't new, but it is striking, but not very well publicized. La...

How Can a $124.8 Million a Year CEO Make Health Care More Affordable?

An op-ed piece in the Providence Journal about huge pay packages for corporate CEOs mentioned the breath-taking $124.8 million total compens...

Indictments in Alleged Scheme Involving Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board

The Chicago Sun-Times reports that the former head of the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board, Stuart Levine, and two local businessm...

Merck Move Shows Industry Adrift on Leadership Expertise

Slowly, surely, the need for biomedical expertise in healthcare leaders is being realized, at least in the investment community. When will h...

Government getting serious on EMR

This press release shows our government is starting to get serious about computerized patient records (I am steering away from the term ...

Hospitals need better security

Another strain on limited hospital budgets is in the making, in a very concerning way: Intruders try to gain access to hospitals' off-li...

University of Pennsylvania Allies with Tai Sophia Institute

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that the prestigious University of Pennsylvania Medical School has announced a partnership with a local ce...