Pfizer, the world’s largest drug maker, announced that it paid about $20 million to 4,500 doctors and other medical professionals for consulting and speaking on its behalf in the last six months of 2009. Pfizer also paid $15.3 million to 250 academic medical centers and other research groups for clinical trials in the same period. The announcements are Pfizer's first public accounting of payments to the people who decide which drugs to recommend, the New York Times reports.
It will cost up to $52 million in capital upgrades at Provident Hospital before the money-losing hospital would be ready for a partnership with the University of Chicago Medical Center, a consultant's report says. The Cook County (IL) Health & Hospitals System is studying whether to form a partnership that would bring the the University of Chicago's physicians to Provident to treat patients and train aspiring doctors. Provident would benefit by receiving patient referrals and a marketing boost by adding the University of Chicago's name and patient care expertise to the 119-bed facility, the Chicago Tribune reports.
San Francisco's St. Mary's Medical Center celebrated the construction kickoff of a $22.75 million cancer center that will allow patients to undergo radiation and chemotherapy in one location. The 14,200-square-foot center will occupy the ground floor of a St. Mary's facility. It is expected that the new equipment will treat approximately 400 chemotherapy and 200 radiation patients annually. The center also will add 17 employees.
The University of Miami medical school has become one of the first in the country to offer an online, searchable database revealing its doctors' relationships with outside businesses. The UM website is searchable by name of faculty member or by name of company. It will be updated at least annually and now includes data for fiscal 2009. It lists doctors' relationship with outside companies—but not the dollar amounts of the deals, which will start to be added later this year.
The head of Quincy (MA) Medical Center is stepping down while the board of the struggling hospital looks for a new leader with the expertise needed to navigate the changing healthcare system, the board's chairwoman said. Gary Gibbons, MD, who has served as president and chief executive since 2005, will resume his practice in vascular surgery and wound care at the hospital. Grace Murphy-McAuliffe, chairwoman of the board of trustees, told the Boston Globe the transition is part of a plan the hospital embarked on at the beginning of the year. It's the hospital's response to financial pressures from what it calls inadequate reimbursement rates from government health plans, and to the prospect of changes in how hospitals are paid.
To officials at St. Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx, NY, replacing an overcrowded parking lot with a five-story parking garage would end the daily hassle of fighting for a space, benefiting staff members and visitors alike. City officials decided to use $19.8 million in federal stimulus money to pay for the garage's construction. But a doctors union is arguing that the project should not qualify for stimulus money because it claims the project would eliminate 20 parking attendant jobs, the New York Times reports.