Category:

What’s in a reputation?.. A lot… The level of antagonism toward pharma in the U.S. is a surprise... considering how deep it goes.. Overall, the corporate reputation of the entire biopharma industry was low, verging on abysmal…"[T]he pricing of oncology drugs is driving a rift between pharma and patients."… At the other end of the healthcare reputation spectrum.. retail pharmacies at the very top…75% of those surveyed believed that retail pharmacists have an "excellent" or "good" corporate reputation. Patients responded positively to the community-based, patient-oriented focus of retail pharmacists,..

The discount drug program intended for safety-net hospitals and special AIDS clinics has mushroomed even more than earlier reports have suggested, with oncology drugs fueling much of the growth,…Medicare Part B hospital outpatient spending shows that 340B institutions accounted for 58% of all spending on drug payments in 2013, with oncology drugs making up 40% of the Medicare fee-for-service costs. Cancer drugs have become "the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow," for 340B hospitals,… it’s too easy for hospitals to qualify for the program, and hospitals have powerful financial incentives to buy up oncology practices, so these financial strategies can proliferative at sites beyond the hospital walls.

Surgeon General Vivek Murthy visited the Las Vegas Valley on Tuesday on the first stop of his national campaign to promote walking and walkable communities…Murthy greeted students and parents of Tate Elementary School,…to promote the health benefits of walking and drawing attention to communities that lack safe and convenient places to walk or use their wheelchairs...

...there are roughly 30 million Americans who suffer from a rare disease. And sadly, about 50% are children.. FDA…recently released a new resource for drug developers — a draft guidance document — designed to help them navigate the difficult and unique challenges of developing and bringing to market…drugs to treat rare diseases...document is intended to encourage drug developers to think early on in the process about all aspects of their program — and encourages careful planning which includes a foundation in strong science. Drug developers for rare diseases are often pioneers…this guidance as another important resource to help support their efforts.

By 2020, a staggering 26 billion IoT-enabled devices will be installed worldwide..When the Federal Bureau of Investigation issues an alert to healthcare organizations and others warning of the serious cyber risks the Internet of Things presents, it's probably best to pay attention…And they're not necessarily all the devices you might think of. They also include things such as HVAC remotes, Wi-Fi camera, insulin dispensers, thermostats and any type of wearable and other medical devices. These devices,...are notorious for having serious security deficiencies… healthcare industry is not as resilient to cyber intrusions compared to the financial and retail sectors, therefore the possibility of increased cyber intrusions is likely,…

An Obamacare program that aims to improve…health care may have an unintended side effect: penalizing hospitals that serve the sickest and poorest patients….penalizes hospitals that have high readmission rates, where patients come back within 30 days. The aim of that program was to encourage doctors to do the best job possible on the first hospital visit, improving patients' experience and saving money by preventing a second trip. Hospitals that have high readmission rates tend to see patients who are less educated, more disabled, and more likely to suffer from depression — factors the Obamacare program doesn't account for.

All non-expired drugs produced for sterile use by Alabama-based compounder Medistat RX have been recalled due to potential contamination, the FDA is warning pharmacists… recalled products were distributed nationwide between Nov. 1, 2014, and Sept. 3, 2015… FDA investigators and Alabama inspectors observed significant deficiencies that raised concerns about the compounder’s ability to assure the sterility of the drugs it produced.

New report details lax management of contractors, missed deadlines, process in disarray… contracts awarded for the development, implementation and operation of HealthCare.gov, the HHS Office of the Inspector General found the supervision of contractors on the job to be sorely lacking…The report…offers details of the lackaidaisical contract oversight – and often the lack of supervision altogether.

• Contractor delays and performance issues were not always identified,
• A contractor incurred unauthorized costs that increased the cost of the contract
• Contracting officers in all government agencies did not have access to contractor past-performance evaluations when making contract awards
• Critical deliverables and management decisions were not properly documented

Today, I (Adam J. Fein) identify new insights about payments in the 2024 drug market. As the charts below show:

• CMS expects the employer-sponsored insurance market to be slightly more resilient than it had previously projected.
• By 2018, however, Medicare, Medicaid, and other public programs will pay more than employers for drugs.
• CMS still projects that individually-purchased private insurance (via exchanges) will account for a small share of drug spending.

President Obama nominated Robert Califf as the next commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration,...Califf has been deputy FDA commissioner for medical products and tobacco. Before that, he was founding director of Duke’s Clinical Research Institute, the world’s largest academic research organization….