Hey, orthopedic surgeons: Check out how much your pals are making in consulting fees from companies that sell orthopedic implants. As part of settlements with the feds over alleged kickbacks to docs, five implant companies now list on their Web sites payments they’ve made this year to consultants, many of whom are M.D.s who implant [...]
Deranged in the pursuit of knowledge, lusting for power or just stone crazy, the mad scientist is always called “Doctor” — though it’s rarely clear what his specialty might be, or whether he’ll accept your insurance. This much is clear, though: Intentionally or not, the mad scientist has hitched his brilliance to a dark star, [...]
A long-acting version of the popular diabetes drug Byetta showed promise in a recent study, but it could still be a while before it’s available to patients, the companies developing the drug said today.The 30-week study included nearly 300 patients using either long-acting Byetta, which is injected once a week, or regular Byetta, which is [...]
John McCain will be talking health care this morning with a bunch of journos, including the WSJ’s Laura Meckler. Click here to watch a video feed of the event. Like many Republicans, McCain is pushing for new tax credits that would put individual insurance on a more equal footing with employer-sponsored insurance. But he also [...]
China’s State Food and Drug Administration has been showing signs of cracking down on the nation’s drug industry, but the hundreds or thousands of Chinese chemical companies that sell raw ingredients to foreign pharmaceutical manufacturers are still going unregulated, the NYT reports.“We have never investigated a chemical company,” the deputy director of policy and regulation [...]
The 21st century doctor is supposed to be all about transparency, but legal liability, that seemingly eternal bugbear, continues to weigh on the profession. Under legislation being considered in Massachusetts, if a doctor apologizes to a patient and admits making a mistake, the statements couldn’t be used in court, the Boston Globe reports.Similar laws are [...]
Medical information is more accessible to patients than ever, but it’s of little help to them when a rushed doctor is speaking jargon.Laura Landro’s column, however, says many medical professionals and health-care groups are offering advice on how to improve the conversation between patients and their doctors. One radiation oncologist, Marisa Weiss, puts on a [...]
Despite spending a few years in Miami, land of cosmetic surgery, the Health Blog hadn’t heard of doctors carving out the washboard abs that some old-fashioned guys still get by following grueling exercise routines.So we couldn’t help but notice these before and after pictures among the studies being presented this week at the American Society [...]
The Terri Schiavo case highlighted the importance of living wills–advance directives that give families and medical personnel instructions on what to do when patients are unable to communicate their wishes.A similar idea is taking hold in the field of mental health care. Psychiatric advance directives, or PADs, are legal documents that patients can prepare to [...]
Florida health officials took a few tepid steps yesterday to distance the state’s Medicaid program from WellCare, a Tampa company that provides managed care to Medicare and Medicaid patients and was raided by state and federal officials last week.Andrew Agwunobi, secretary of the state’s Agency for Health Care Administration (and a former WellCare director) said [...]
