Author: Peter

Food and Drug Administration warned Novartis AG last week after the Swiss firm was found in violation of manufacturing practices last year at two of its India drug-making plants…The warning, issued to Novartis's generic drugs unit Sandoz on Oct. 22, came after FDA officials inspected its Turbhe and Kalwa sites in western India…The FDA has banned more than 30 drug manufacturing plants in India since 2013, as it ramps up inspections of foreign facilities that supply to the United States. Several of India's largest drugmakers have faced rebukes, hurting the reputation of the industry, an important supplier of cheap generics.

Northern Nevada Medical Center (Sparks) recently received a 2015 HealthInsight Quality Award for its high performance in quality care measures and satisfaction. NNMC was one of only two local hospitals to earn the award and one of only seven statewide…HealthInsight Quality Award recipients have demonstrated delivery of high quality health care and excellent performance on a combination of quality of care measures and on patients’ perception of care measures. The federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services report these measures, which evaluate care provided for heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia and surgical infection prevention…NNMC, as do hospitals nationwide, focuses on patient involvement in care, and the award criteria include performance on patients’ perspectives in hospital care...

Rite Aid had a market value of about $6.4 billion before news reports of merger talks...Walgreens Boots Allianceis near a deal to buy Rite Aid....potentially uniting two of the country’s biggest drugstore chains…meaning a takeover could be worth more than $8 billion after a likely premium from Walgreens. Rite Aid also has $7.4 billion of debt…would create a new pharmacy giant with heightened influence with drug makers, pharmacy benefit managers and others in the health care industry.

Mahesh Kuthuru, M.D…of Henderson…pleaded guilty today to unlawfully writing prescriptions…was indicted in October 2014, pleaded guilty to one count of distribution of a controlled substance…faces not more than 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $1 million… According to the plea agreement…operated a medical practice known as Desert Pain Management in Las Vegas…wrote prescriptions for Oxycodone, Percocet, MS Contin, Roxicodone and Methadone to undercover officers who posed as patients…

Bloomberg's Cynthia Koons reports on earnings for big pharmaceuticals.

For those concerned about the rising cost of pharmaceuticals, Congress is proposing some relief. The two-year budget deal proposed by lawmakers this week unexpectedly includes a provision that would require generic drug makers to pay additional rebates to state Medicaid programs for any medicine that increases in price faster than the inflation rate…The cost of new medicines for hard-to-treat diseases, such as cancer and hepatitis C, worry public and private payers, who call them budget busters. And there is growing outrage at companies such as Valeant Pharmaceuticals and...Turing Pharmaceuticals for buying drugs and then boosting the prices to sky-high levels.

A promising new method for battling the spread of HIV in Africa was inspired by an unexpected source 8,000 miles away: a baby shower at the home of a Las Vegas professor…Dr. Echezona Ezeanolue — who leads health research efforts at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas — is earning praise from medical experts nationwide for coming up with a more effective way to convince pregnant women in his native Nigeria to be tested for the disease…Ezeanolue had long sought to find a way to boost the country's testing rate when inspiration hit in 2011 after his wife threw a party to celebrate the upcoming birth of their fourth child…"My wife said to me, why don't we use baby showers?"…It was a way to remove some of the barriers…To convince women to get tested, Ezeanolue and his team of 10 fellow researchers organized parties led by religious leaders at worship sites in Nigeria, a country with high church attendance rates. Faith-based organizations are highly influential across Africa, and they play a critical role in the fight against AIDS...

San Francisco supervisors have accepted a $400,000 payment from Nevada to settle allegations that psychiatric patients were wrongly shipped to California upon discharge...Board of Supervisors Tuesday approved the settlement without comment...San Francisco sued Nevada in September 2013 after the Sacramento Bee published accounts of patients who were discharged from Rawson-Neal Psychiatric Hospital in Las Vegas, and given bus tickets to California cities for further care.

Novartis agreed to pay about $390 million to wrap up federal kickback claims before the $3.3 billion case went to trial. The Justice Department and a number of U.S. states had sought up to $3.4 billion in damages in the case, which zeroed in on the Swiss drugmaker's relationships with specialty pharmacies…settlement, together with other one-time charges, knocked down Novartis' third-quarter net income, which declined to $1.8 billion…Novartis offered special deals to pharmacies to boost prescriptions of its transplant drug Myfortic (mycophenolic acid) in a head-to-head competition with Roche's CellCept (mycophenolate mofetil). The drugmaker set up another scheme to increase refills of its iron chelation drug Exjade (deferasirox)…

Questions about a cryotherapy worker who died last week at her south Las Vegas Valley job lingered…but it wasn't clear who was going to find the answers…Multiple agencies told the Review-Journal they were not responsible for any investigations and that cryotherapy businesses are not regulated like medical clinics or salons… Ake-Salvacion died while using a cryotherapy machine, according to her family and the Nevada Occupational Safety and Health Administration…OSHA is not investigating…The agency responded when the body was found but won't press on…. the business is not regulated by any medical board…and their procedures and equipment are not monitored by the Food and Drug Administration… Nevada regulations do not cover the use of cryotherapy for cosmetic procedures, according to the executive director of the cosmetology board…Neither the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services nor the Southern Nevada Health District regulate such businesses… Rejuvenice's website says it provides “medical therapy” with full-body devices at negative 240 degrees.