Public Citizen is calling for federal inspectors general to investigate the deaths of two patients who were transfused with contaminated blood this summer that came from the Bethesda National Naval Medical Center. The hospital, now part of the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, sent blood to the NIH that had previously been identified and labeled as infectious, yet it was infused into two patients at NIH, according to Sidney M. Wolfe, director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group. Wolfe, in a letter to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, calls for the two departments' inspectors general to investigate and to "stop unequivocally dangerous procedures" at the Bethesda medical facility and "possible problems" at NIH.
Three large hospital systems—Cleveland Clinic, Henry Ford in Detroit, and Parkview Health in Fort Wayne, Ind.—have stopped reporting data on hospital-acquired infections to the Leapfrog Group, a nonprofit organization in Washington, D.C., according to our updated hospital Ratings. That deprives consumers of important information on hospital safety. John Santa, M.D., M.P.H., director of the Consumer Reports Health Ratings Center, says: Eileen Sheil, executive director of corporate communications for Cleveland Clinic, said that the hospital system stopped reporting to the Leapfrog group so it could focus its efforts on reports it makes to similar government-run databases. That includes one run by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) that all hospitals must now report to. "We are committed to safe, high-quality outcomes and transparency," said Sheil.
Leflunomide offers a big window onto some worrisome trends in the pharmaceutical industry, including manufacturing problems and drug shortages that can result not just in price spikes, but in big disruptions in patient care - sometimes even deaths.It's not entirely clear why leflunomide became scarce, or who benefited from the price increases. The good news is that at least they appear to have been temporary. One clear factor in the shortage was a suspension in imports by Apotex, the U.S. arm of a Canadian maker of generics, after inspectors from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration found problems at two of its Toronto facilities in September 2009.
Doctors paid millions of dollars by Medtronic failed to identify a significant cancer risk with the company's spine surgery product in a 2009 paper about results of a large clinical trial. The surgeons left out important data and claimed there was no significant link between the product and cancer. The company and doctors had become aware of information on an additional cancer case, which pushed the concern to a critical level, at least two months before the paper was published, a Journal Sentinel/MedPage Today investigation found. Independent researchers say they had an ethical duty to report the cancer risk. The breach is the latest conflict-of-interest controversy facing Medtronic, which is under investigation by a U.S. Senate committee and the U.S. Justice Department for its marketing of the spine surgery product known as bone morphogenetic protein-2, or BMP-2.
Police in Vermont are barred from access to a key state database that tracks the prescribing of potentially addictive opiate drugs, even though the $392,371 in biennial funding the program receives comes from the federal Department of Justice. Instead, the database known as the prescription drug monitoring network is run by the state Health Department for the benefit of the state's medical community, said Barbara Cimaglio, deputy commissioner for substance abuse at the state Health Department. "It's really a tool to assist the physicians," Cimaglio said. "It's not a tool to routinely and swiftly identify people who are abusing medications."
As the Walgreen Company pushes its army of pharmacists into the role of medical care provider, it is bringing them out from their decades-old post behind the pharmacy counter and onto the sales floor. The pharmacy chain, based in Deerfield, Ill., and the nation's largest, has renovated 20 stores in the Chicago area and is converting more than 40 in Indianapolis to get the pharmacist closer to patients. Pharmacists in the revamped stores are being kept away from the telephone, where dealing with insurance coverage questions and other administrative tasks occupy 25 percent of their time, Walgreen says. "What we are seeing now is pharmacists should be using their knowledge to help consumers manage their medications appropriately," said Nimesh Jhaveri, executive director of pharmacy and health care experience at Walgreen.