(Reuters) - An exciting class of new cancer drugs may boost patients' odds for survival, but healthcare providers and insurers will be under pressure to find savings elsewhere to pay for the high price tags of the new treatments. Doctors at this week's annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology heard groundbreaking data on a new class of immune system boosters that some believe will become the main treatment for more than half of all cancers in the next 10 years. They included drugs from Bristol-Myers Squibb and Merck & Co that shrank tumors in patients with advanced melanoma and lung cancer.
Under pressure from state lawmakers to reform, the Medical Board of California on Tuesday embarked on a search for a new executive director and considered a host of proposals aimed at combating reckless prescribing by doctors that is contributing to overdose deaths. At a specially convened meeting, the board discussed the need for urgency in developing new guidelines for prescribing OxyContin, Vicodin and other narcotic painkillers that have fueled a national prescription drug death epidemic. Panel members also expressed tentative support for a proposal that would form specialized enforcement teams to identify and investigate doctors engaged in suspect prescribing.
Several members of the Los Angeles congressional delegation asked the federal government Tuesday to postpone moving hundreds of thousands of chronically ill seniors and disabled patients into managed care. In a letter signed by 14 U.S. representatives, the officials raised concerns about whether the health plans would be ready for the transition and whether patients would have access to the care they need. The state and the federal government signed an agreement in March establishing the program for the "dual eligible" patients, who receive both Medicare and Medi-Cal. About 450,000 patients, including 200,000 in Los Angeles County, are expected to be enrolled in the program.
LONG BEACH, N.Y. -- Officials at the last hospital still closed because of damage from Superstorm Sandy are no longer predicting when they will be able to reopen. The Long Beach Medical Center, located on a waterfront channel just east of New York City, suffered heavy flooding damage in the October storm, requiring at least $56 million in repairs, hospital officials said. The closing has idled hundreds of workers at the 162-bed facility and forced ambulances to take emergency patients longer distances to hospitals in nearby Oceanside and East Meadow.
BATON ROUGE -- The state Civil Service Commission refused Wednesday to approve layoff plans tied to Gov. Bobby Jindal's deals to privatize four LSU hospitals. The commission voted 4-3 to reject the layoffs of about 3,000 state employees at the hospitals in New Orleans, Lafayette, Houma and Lake Charles. The Advocate reports that commissioners complained about the lack of information provided by LSU about the privatization deals. Civil Service is the state's human resources agency. The commission is charged with overseeing layoff plans when contracts outsource jobs that traditionally have been held by state employees.
Electronic health record vendors are responding to pent-up demand among doctors for EHRs they can access on mobile devices, including smartphones and computer tablets. According to a new national survey by Washington, D.C.-based Black Book Rankings, 122 companies said they would introduce fully functional mobile access to their EHR products, native iPad versions, or both by the end of this year. Another 135 EHR vendors said that mobile apps were in their strategic plans. Among the leading vendors that already offer mobile versions of their EHRs are Greenway, NextGen, Cerner, GE, Allscripts and eClinicalWorks.