Dire shortages of two critical cancer drugs—shortfalls that have threatened the lives and care of thousands of patients—should be resolved within weeks, federal drug officials said. In the case of Doxil, the F.D.A. has decided to allow temporary shipments from India of Lipodox, which is similar to Doxil and is made by Sun Pharma Global. And the pharmaceutical company Hospira is rushing 31,000 vials—enough to last the entire nation a month—of preservative-free methotrexate from its plant in Australia to the United States. Hospitals began receiving the drug, which is vital in the treatment of a common form of childhood leukemia, on Tuesday.
Dozens of unnamed people show up in emergency rooms or police stations every year, and in most cases they eventually are identified. When a hospital patient doesn't have identification, nurses, social workers, doctors and secretaries question the paramedics and call police and homeless shelters. They look for clues in personal belongings, such as a grocery coupon card on a key chain. Employees at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, for example, have identified people based on video rental cards.
Hospitalizations for asthma have been dramatically cut by a program that helps families reduce the conditions that trigger attacks, saving $1.46 in hospital care for every $1 spent on prevention, according to a Children's Hospital Boston study released Monday. The hospital's program, the Community Asthma Initiative, targeted 283 children with asthma in some of Boston's poorest neighborhoods. Health workers taught families how to correctly use medications and eliminate triggers of attack, such as contaminated bedding and feather dusters. After the first year, asthma-related emergency room visits for children in the program plummeted 68 percent compared with their emergency room trips in the year before enrolling, and there was an 85 percent drop in hospitalizations, according to the study published online in the journal Pediatrics.
Roche Holding AG is working with U.S. authorities to determine the source of counterfeit Avastin, purchased by at least 19 medical practices in the U.S. Roche and the Food and Drug Administration are seeking to prevent the fake cancer drug, which doesn't include the active ingredient bevacizumab, from being distributed further, the company's Genentech unit said in an e-mail late yesterday. The FDA notified the company about the issue in December, said Edward Lang, a spokesman for Roche's South San Francisco, California-based unit.
Continuing, wide-ranging and severe problems with patient care at Parkland Memorial Hospital are concerning, but not surprising, a physician on Parkland's board of managers said Wednesday. Dr. Roberto de la Cruz, one of the board's newest members, said the report by Alvarez & Marsal Healthcare Industry Group shows "the day-to-day nuts and bolts operations of a big-city hospital."
Medicare's first public effort to identify hospitals with patient safety problems has pinpointed many prestigious teaching hospitals in Boston and around the nation, raising concerns about quality at these places but also bolstering objections that the government's measurements are skewed. Massachusetts General Hospital and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, both affiliated with Harvard Medical School; and Boston Medical Center, affiliated with Boston University, were among those having substantially more complications than the average hospital, according to data evaluated by the Medicare program.