Medical device company ev3 Inc. announced it agreed to buy technology company Chestnut Medical Technologies Inc. for up to $150 million in cash and stock. Ev3 will pay $75 million upfront for Chestnut, with 30% to 40% of that total being paid in stock. It expects the deal for the privately held company to close within 45 days.
A Colorado physician was sentenced to nine months in jail for prescribing an antidepressant over the Internet to a California teenager who later committed suicide. San Mateo County prosecutors charged psychiatrist Christian Hageseth III, MD, of Fort Collins, CO, with a single felony count of practicing medicine without a valid California license.
A consortium of health plans in Minnesota is rolling out a Web-based system that will let providers submit insurance claims electronically to comply with a July 15 legislative deadline. The Minnesota Council of Health Plans tapped Infotech Global Inc. to power the system, called MN E-Connect, which serves as a Web portal that lets providers file medical, hospital, and dental claims.
Despite renewed discussion around healthcare IT investments because of the federal stimulus package, most HIT budgets are still tight and providers are looking to IT vendors for creative solutions to keep projects moving. But a new report from KLAS says those creative solutions are virtually non-existent. The report, Executive Reaction to the Stimulus Package, explores the gap between what providers need and what vendors are offering to deal with a troubled economy.
The World Health Organization kept its pandemic flu alert at the second highest level during a meeting last week, but said that future changes would reflect how severe an outbreak was as well as how widespread. The agency has been weighing how to revamp its pandemic alert scale to reflect both the severity of the flu as well as its geographic spread around the world following criticism that it may have caused undue panic about the new strain whose effects have been mainly mild apart from in Mexico.
Various inappropriate photographs of on-duty nurses at a National Health Service trust have sullied the reputation of the facility. In addition, all the disturbing images were taken as the three hospitals of the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust were at the center of the worst superbug outbreak in NHS history: More than 1,200 patients were infected in two C. diff outbreaks between 2004 and 2006.