An autism doctor who operates clinics in St. Peters and Springfield, IL, has been suspended in two states for alleged mistreatment of children. Mark Geier, MD, has been accused of misdiagnosing children with early puberty and treating them with high doses of Lupron, a drug used to suppress the hormone testosterone. Geier operates autism treatment clinics called ASD Centers in at least eight states. Maryland, his home base, suspended his license in April. Washington state followed a month later. A doctor who is disciplined in another state is also subject to discipline in Missouri and Illinois. A spokesman for the Missouri healing arts board would not confirm an investigation of Geier, whose license is active. A preliminary hearing on Geier's Illinois license is set for Aug. 22 in Chicago. Geier referred questions to his Maryland lawyer, Jay Schwartz, who said he is under a gag order.
The federal government has ordered a team of state inspectors to conduct a comprehensive review of Mercy Medical Center in Des Moines and its affiliates. The inspection was prompted by the state's discovery of a major deficiency related to inadequate monitoring of patients. The precise nature of the deficiency has yet to be disclosed by the Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals or the hospital. Mercy spokesman Gregg Lagan declined to answer questions about the deficiency or the inspection "out of respect for the process." He did, however, release a written statement that said Mercy is currently "hosting" a team of state inspectors. "The current visit is a follow-up to a May survey and is conducted to validate all suggested changes have been made," the statement said. "Their team will also ensure all additional areas within Mercy are in full compliance with their standards."
In the controlled chaos of an hospital emergency department, ensuring that patients are pain-free and can make informed choices about their care often takes a back seat to assessing and stabilizing them and moving them through the system as fast as possible. But now some experts say that providing palliative care can and should be a priority in emergency departments, and they're putting together a program to help hospitals better address those issues. "A decade ago, we thought of the emergency department as a way station," says Tammie Quest, an associate professor of emergency medicine at Emory University School of Medicine. "Now we're recognizing what can be done to identify patient needs there, and help to initiate what can be done in the hospital or once the patient leaves the hospital." Under the sponsorship of the Center to Advance Palliative Care, an advocacy organization, Quest is heading up the development of a program that will provide hospitals with online tools and guidelines, identify best practices and link doctors and others with experts to help integrate palliative care into their emergency departments.
A California hospital chain has boosted its profits by transferring an unusually high number of patients from its emergency rooms to its hospital beds, gaining hundreds of millions of dollars by targeting people with Medicare, a California Watch investigation has found. Patients and their families have described feeling trapped by doctors and administrators working at Prime Healthcare Services facilities. They entered the emergency room and were stuck in a "Twilight Zone," as one family member described it, unable to see their own doctor at another facility or faced with treatment that seemed unnecessary. The patients came to Prime hospitals with legitimate medical problems. But they ended up targets of a business strategy meant to maximize the number of insured patients treated in hospitals owned by the company, according to an analysis of state data, interviews and a review of 2,700 pages of court and public testimony.
The public health community has gotten markedly better at distributing effective vaccines to the children who need them. But researchers are noticing an increase in mistrust of vaccines around the world, and they're concerned that unfounded suspicions could derail immunization programs essential to saving lives. Anti-vaccine groups in the U.S. and Europe have for years questioned the safety of vaccines like measles-mumps-rubella, or MMR; one highly publicized claim -- that the vaccine causes autism -- has been debunked over and over. But according to Heidi Larson, a researcher and lecturer at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, anti-vaccine groups exist in developing countries as well and are getting better networked and organized. In a paper published online last month in The Lancet, Larson and her co-authors write that "current antivaccination groups have new levels of global reach and influence, empowered by the internet and social networking capacities allowing like minds to rapidly self-organise transnationally, whether for or against vaccines."
Chickenpox vaccine has dramatically cut deaths from the disease, especially in children, says a new government study proclaiming an important public health victory. Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that chickenpox deaths fell from an average of 105 per year to 14 after the vaccine had been available for a dozen years. Deaths declined in all age groups, but the drop was most significant among children. "To see the near elimination of chickenpox deaths in this country is very exciting," said Jane Seward, a CDC official who co-authored the paper. She has been involved in the agency's chickenpox vaccine program for 15 years. The report was released online today by the journal Pediatrics. Chickenpox is caused by a virus and is highly contagious. Symptoms include an itchy skin rash and fever. Most children suffer no more than that, but some suffer complications such as skin infections, swelling of the brain and pneumonia. Severe cases are more common among adolescents and adults who get it for the first time. Also, the virus -- called varicella -- can reactivate in people later in life and cause a painful illness called shingles.