- Novartis offices in South Korea raided over bribery concerns (statnews.com)
In the latest sign that global drug makers remain under scrutiny for their dealings with health care providers, South Korean authorities raided Novartis offices in search of evidence the company provided bribes to local doctors…Seoul Western District Prosecutors’ Office confiscated various documents, including account books, in order to determine whether rebates the drug maker offered physicians may have actually been bribes...The probe appears to be at an early stage, but is likely to be closely watched for signs that global drug makers continue to stumble in their practices in various foreign markets…
- One-Third of Clinical Trial Results Never Disclosed, Study Finds (bloomberg.com)
One-third of clinical trials conducted at 51 major U.S. universities and academic hospitals were never published in a peer-reviewed journal or in a government registry online, according to a new study...The researchers looked at 4,347 trials that were completed between October 2007 and September 2010. Of those, only 29 percent had results published within two years of finishing data collection, and 13 percent were posted on the government database ClinicalTrials.gov within the same period...about 67 percent of the studies disclosed their results by...2014...You’d like to think that academic institutions are role models for science...The truth is we’re not doing very well...University of Florida and Ohio State University joined Yale with some of the highest rates of publication in peer-reviewed journals...Boston University, Cornell and Oregon Health and Science University...had among the lowest rates...Pharmaceutical companies, the government and foundations invest a lot of money in clinical trials...If the results aren’t made public, that’s wasted money...Disclosure of results is critically important to advance science...Whether those results are positive or negative, and are important as a part of our agreements with funders as well as the participants in clinical trials...Beyond creating a data void that makes future research more difficult, unpublished results also may represent an ethical issue. Patients in clinical trials undergo experimental treatments with the understanding that doing so will advance medical knowledge, which can’t happen if the results aren’t published...
- Alibaba pilot promises seamless online doctor to prescription service in China (fiercepharmaasia.com)
...online market giant Alibaba Group launched a pilot medical service last month in China that promises a patient can visit a doctor online and get his prescription filled the same way with home delivery and payment to boot...part of Alibaba's health business, aims to tap into a market that iResearch said had an estimated revenue stream of 16 billion yuan ($2.4 billion) last year…We want to build a health care product sales platform that links manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers to offer various medical products and services to customers…The pilot saw patient Hu Tianshun enter medical data via an online form and then a video chat with a doctor in another city was held…adding the doctor made a diagnosis and places a online prescription order with an Alibaba's online shops...Hu got his drugs the next day, and completed the transaction by paying the deliveryman…
- Why You Should Watch Zubin Damania Innovate Healthcare (medcitynews.com)Blank Script | Taylor Swift (youtube.com)Big Pharma | Big Poppa Parody by Biggie | ZDoggMD.com (youtube.com)
You may not know the name of one of the most talented and innovative forces in healthcare but there is a high probability that you have seen one of his video parodies about health. This is because Zubin Damania, M.D., goes under the alter ego ZDogg MD...He is creator of ZDogg MD and the Founder and CEO of Turntable Health, a direct primary care clinic in Downtown Las Vegas...He has been called the Weird Al of healthcare and uses humor and pop culture to education populations about important health issues... So by creating this outlet for humor, satire, and creativity, I sort of found that unique part of my voice that had been suppressed, and I was able to feel like I was reaching people and effecting real change that I couldn’t do in the hospital...As a hospitalist in practice for 10 years, I was deep in the trenches of medicine, deep in the daily paradox of joy and horror...So I speak the language of that world, a language that emerges from the shared experience of healthcare people. Very often this tribe feels voiceless, so my goal has always been to find a new way of expressing not just our dissatisfaction, but our vision for how to make things better...Payment models and primary care are at the top of my list...Fix that base of the pyramid and other stuff will fall in place. Fixing that culture is crucial...
- FDA should warn of risks of opioid, benzo combo, say public health experts (statnews.com)CITIZEN PETITION (health.baltimorecity.gov)Benzodiazepine prescribing patterns and deaths from drug overdose among US veterans receiving opioid analgesics: case-cohort study (bmj.com)
Public health officials around the country want the Food and Drug Administration to warn people about the risks of taking opioids along with common anti-anxiety drugs...Forty-one public health officials and researchers signed a petition, which will be submitted to the FDA... It calls for so-called black box warnings on both opioids and benzodiazepines, indicating that their concurrent use "contributes to the risk of fatal overdose." Opioids are intended primarily for pain relief; benzodiazepines, like Valium and Xanax, are tranquilizers that can treat anxiety...A 2015 study in the British Medical Journal found that US veterans taking opioids who took more benzodiazepines were more likely to die than those who took fewer benzodiazepines...Deaths from both opioids and benzodiazepines have been on the rise...
- 4 Reasons Medications May Not Work Properly (pharmacytimes.com)
Your patients may not realize that the effectiveness of their medications is largely within their control...According to the Institute of Medicine, nearly 50% of US adults have trouble understanding their medications’ instructions, so pharmacists should engage patients in interactive conversations in order to ensure that they do not stop taking them...Here are some common reasons why a patient’s medications may not be working properly:
- Patients are not taking medications exactly as directed.
- A patient’s diet may be interfering with medications.
- A patient’s lifestyle habits may be interfering with medications.
- A patient may have comorbid conditions.
- Engineers 3D Print Tissue That Mimics How The Human Liver Functions (forbes.com)
Engineers at the University of California...say they have successfully 3D printed life-like liver tissue that simulates how the human liver functions and is structured. The researchers say the tissue could be used as a platform for drug screening...In the case of Federal Drug Administration approval for a drug, on average it takes around 11 to 14 years and $2.6 billion to get a drug to market...Around 90% of drugs don’t pass animal tests or human clinical trials. In the case of the new 3D printed tissue, the researchers say pharmaceutical companies could use the tissue as platform in the lab to focus on drugs that appear to be more promising and eliminate drugs that have less efficacy...To create the liver tissue that mimics real human liver tissue, the engineers created a diverse combination of liver cells and supporting cells systematically organized in a hexagonal pattern under a microscope. But to print that complex tissue, they needed a 3D printer that could accommodate the 3D micro-structures found in biological tissue. The team created their own bioprinting tech in the lab capable of reproducing the elements and features of the tissue…I think that this will serve as a great drug screening tool for pharmaceutical companies and that our 3D bioprinting technology opens the door for patient-specific organ printing in the future. The liver tissue constructed by this novel 3D printing technology will also be extremely useful in reproducing in vitro disease models such as hepatitis, cirrhosis and cancer...
- ACA ‘Savings’: Paying Doctors And Hospitals Bonuses To Deny Care To Patients (forbes.com)
...one of the lesser-known provisions of the ACA (Affordable Care Act) calls for the federal government to pay physicians and hospitals bonuses if they deny health care to seniors and the disabled...Section 3022 of the ACA establishes the Medicare Shared Savings Program. The MSSP establishes the notion of Accountable Care Organizations. These are groups of health care providers (hospitals, physicians, other providers) who join together for purposes of a obtaining bonus payments based on their participation in the MSSP and Medicare fee-for-service incentive program...ACOs are paid to "reduce costs" for treating their patients...For patients assigned to ACOs, the ACO receives bonus payments based on the total amount Medicare pays for care of those patients. That total includes all care those patients receive from all providers – specifically, including providers who are not members of the ACO. Bonuses are based on reducing total costs relative to what would be expected risk-adjusted cost based on each patient’s health status...Because this program is part of Medicare’s fee-for-service system, "reduce costs" means "reduce services" – that is, "give patients less health care."...the ACO program encourages hospitals and physicians...to encourage patients to use less health care...It is highly ironic that a law proposed, in part, because of the allegation health insurance companies were increasing their profits by denying care to patients – is now the means by which the federal government pays physicians and hospitals bonuses to, in effect, deny care to patients...
- Health exchange disputes federal report (reviewjournal.com)
Nevada's health insurance exchange disputes a federal report claiming it misallocated funds for creating its program and recommending it consider refunding $893,000 to the Centers Medicare and Medicaid Services...A refund is not needed, the Silver State Health Insurance Exchange stated in a written response to the report from the Office of Inspector General, Department of Health and Human Services...We believe that this conclusion is based upon an erroneous interpretation of federal guidance regarding cost allocation accounting principles and the timing of cost allocation adjustments...It also pointed to comments from CMS that not only back up the state agency's take on the matter but are also included in the OIG's own report...In its report, however, the OIG was not swayed, stating it believes "our first recommendation is valid." The OIG cited the Nevada agency for using outdated data when it was establishing its marketplace despite the availability of updated data, having no internal controls, allowing insufficient staff oversight, and having no written policy on the allocation process...The Nevada marketplace should have used the updated, better data to update its cost allocation methodology...
- ObamaCare May Be Growing The Number Of Unpaid Medical Bills (forbes.com)
A big hospital chain’s surprise decision to write off a slug of bad debt may be a signal of much deeper consumer healthcare strains being caused by ObamaCare...Community Health Systems surprised analysts this week...the company would take a $169 million provision for bad debt. The write off was a big part of Community’s dismal fourth quarter earnings report...The rising amount of uncollected co-pays and deductibles may be an early sign of consumer stress as the economy weakens. But more likely, it also reflects changes in the healthcare market that are saddling consumers with a much bigger share of their medical costs...ObamaCare is playing a big role...The structure of the insurance products offered under ObamaCare was deliberately skewed toward hollowed-out health plans. These plans sport large out-of-pocket limits and often skimpy or no co-insurance on drugs and doctors purchased outside a health plan’s increasingly narrow drug formularies and provider networks...Americans are now less insured for medical costs…The earnings report from Community Health was an early financial harbinger of this trend. Collecting on these rising out of pocket costs will get more difficult for healthcare providers as the ObamaCare insurance designs become the new market standard. This will be ObamaCare’s legacy – a new standard for hollow health coverage.