A U.S. Senator is accusing URL Pharma Inc. of price gouging after the pharmaceutical company raised the price of its exclusive gout treatment drug from 4 cents per pill to $5 per pill, an increase of 12,400%.
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) has asked Philadelphia-based URL Pharma to reconsider it price hike for the drug colchicine, sold under the brand name Colcrys. Brown has also asked Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Acting Administrator Donald Berwick, MD, to investigate the impact of the price hike on the 3 million Americans – many of them senior citizens – who use colchicine to treat their gout, and the potential financial hit for Medicare.
Brown said in a media release that 21 drug companies – including URL Pharma – were manufacturing oral colchicines for gout and selling it for as little as four cents per pill. However, after URL Pharma received Food and Drug Administration approval for exclusive rights to produce and sell colchicine under the Colcrys brand, "the price spiked to $5 a pill."
According to Brown, physicians at the American College of Rheumatology report that the standard dosage for a person with gout is two colchicines tablets per day when a patient is not suffering a gout attack. The dosage may increase to treat flare-ups. With three million gout sufferers averaging two pills each day Brown said URL Pharma would sell nearly $11 billion worth of the medication in one year.
In a statement issued Tuesday, URL Pharma disputed Brown’s projected earnings for Colcrys, saying the senator's figures are " more than 20 times larger than our most optimistic sales projections for this year."
"Yet again, a pharmaceutical company is taking advantage of FDA approval to price-gouge their customers and pad their profits," Brown said in a media release. "Because most Americans living with gout are seniors—and the average Social Security recipient receives just around $14,000 per year—a price hike to more than $3,500 per year will break the budgets of so many who depend on this drug. URL Pharma should do the right thing and put patients over their profits—particularly since their patients are those who can least afford a colossal price increase."
URL Pharma asserted that its earnings are "well below our sales numbers with about $23MM budgeted for further research on Colcrys…Please note that URL Pharma funded, and continues to fund, all Colcrys research, not NIH."
Brown noted that this is second time in the span of a few months that a major pharmaceutical company has exploited the FDA approval process. He pointed to the decision by KV Pharmaceuticals Co. to raise the price of its prenatal drug Makena from about $15 a shot to $1,500 a shot. The Bridgeton, MO-based company backed away from the decision amid intense public criticism, threats of a government investigation, and the potential challenges of getting government and insurance companies to pay.
"My overarching concern with this price increase is that this seems to be a new model for drug companies," Brown said in his letter to Berwick. "As we saw recently with the drug Makena, companies are cherry-picking medications and treatments that have been widely used but have not gone through the FDA approval process. URL Pharma, KV Pharmaceutical, and others are taking these medications through the approval process with minimal investment and are reaping disproportionate rewards for their work."
A Feb. 9, 2011 media release from the drug maker boasted of the company's "Colcrys Co-Pay Assistance Program," which it described as "an initiative designed to help patients save money on their health insurance co-payment for Colcrys." The program provided a reusable coupon that allowed reduced co-pays from $15 a month, to $25 a month.
"We are committed to making Colcrys accessible to everyone who can benefit from it," Richard H. Roberts, MD, president/CEO of URL Pharma said in the February statement. "In response to feedback from patients and healthcare providers, we enhanced our Co-Pay Program to facilitate access to Colcrys."
URL Pharma reiterated its "very generous patient assistance efforts" in Tuesday's statement.
The pharmaceutical firm describes Colcrys as "the only single-ingredient colchicine product approved by the FDA, and is indicated for the prevention and treatment of gout flares and for the treatment of Familial Mediterranean Fever."
Brown's letters to URL Pharma and CMS can be viewed here and here, respectively. URL Pharma's statement may be viewed here.
Five Democratic U.S. Senators on Monday sent a letter to Vice President Joe Biden, urging him to reject Republican efforts to make their Medicare privatization proposal part of the budget deficit negotiations.
The senators -- Bill Nelson (D-FL), Ben Cardin (D-MD), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Claire McCaskill (D-MO) and Jon Tester (D-MT) -- said in their letter to Biden, who is leading the bipartisan budget talks, that Republicans continue to ignore the overwhelming public sentiment against the proposal. It would end Medicare as a government-backed benefits program in 2022 and replace it with vouchers that would offset some costs for seniors purchasing health insurance on the private market.
"As the working group moves beyond areas of consensus and into parts of the budget that will require the toughest choices, we wish to identify in advance one proposal that we cannot support in any form -- the House-passed plan to dismantle Medicare," the senators wrote. "For the good of the nation's seniors, it must remain off the table."
The GOP proposal, nicknamed "Vouchercare" by its detractors, passed the House along a party-line vote this spring, and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), the author of the legislation, and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) have both said that their Medicare proposal should be part of the deficit reduction talks.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the Ryan plan will double the amount of money that seniors would end up paying out of their own pockets, about $12,500 a year.
A poll released Monday by the PewResearchCenter shows mixed reaction to the GOP proposal among 1,509 adults surveyed, with 41% opposing it, 36% favor it, and nearly a quarter (23%) with no opinion either way. However, those ages 50 and older oppose it by a 51%-to-29% margin. And this opposition is intense: 42% strongly oppose this kind of change, while only 19% strongly favor it, Pew said.
It's been established that one effective method for improving patient safety is to create an environment where staff are encouraged to self-report medical errors without fear of retaliation.
So, it was surprising to see a recent HR Solutions survey that found that while 70% of healthcare employees believe they can report a medical/healthcare error caused by a colleague without fear of reprisal, only 54% said they can report an error they themselves have caused without fear of retaliation.
And, only 65% of healthcare employees in the survey said they would be supported by their supervisors if they committed a medical error. The study analyzed survey responses from nearly 300,000 healthcare employees at 160 hospitals and health systems throughout the nation, so this is an impressive sampling.
What does it say about the state of employee relations and engagement if more than half of healthcare employees fear retaliation?
One big obstacle for creating an open, engaged workforce might be workers' fear of retaliation from front line supervisors, says Rick Lovering, the vice president for Human Resources and Organizational Development at AtlantiCare in Egg Harbor Township, NJ. It's not enough, he says, for a CEO to declare a zero-tolerance policy on retaliation from a lofty perch in the c-suite. That policy has to be instilled in every manager in a healthcare organizations.
"You do it through constant education and constant reinforcement," Lovering says. "I'm a firm believer that the conversation can drive the culture, so if you keep talking about these things and why we don't want to have a punitive response to errors people buy into it."
Lovering says AtlantiCare engages its managers as coaches and mentors for the staff they supervise. "So if someone makes a patient safety error that would be a coaching-for-improvement opportunity. That is the way we view it and we have taught our supervisors to view it that way," he says.
But even that isn't enough to protect employee confidence from the occasional "rogue manager," Lovering says. Employees must have a safe outlet to vent their concerns about retaliation. So, AtlantiCare contracted with an outside company that fields Intranet complaints from staff about supervisors – or any other area of hospital operations. Employees who complain have the option of remaining anonymous.
At first, the idea that employees would be able to anonymously complain about their bosses didn't sit well with supervisors. "We heard a lot about 'how am I going to prevent employees from making me look bad, saying things that aren't happening?'"
Lovering says. "I've had very little of that. I tell managers 'if you are creating an environment where employees want to sabotage your career that says something about the environment you are creating.'"
Where it can get tricky, however, is with the repeat offenders, the worker who repeatedly makes serious medical errors that could endanger patients. Sometimes, those honest errors point to an unpleasant reality.
"Clearly if we had an employee that had multiple errors, ultimately you might have to get past retraining and have a discussion about if they're cut out for that kind of work," Lovering says. "We have been fortunate and not had to go down that road with our staff yet."
AtlantiCare's programs to ease staff anxiety about self-reporting medical errors are similar to the efforts of hundreds of other hospitals across the country. This is not a new issue. So why is there such a high level of distrust among staff, several years into these initiatives? How much of it is residual, and how much of it is warranted?
Person Memorial Hospital in Roxboro, NC, announced Friday that it plans to become the second hospital to affiliate with Duke LifePoint Healthcare, a joint venture of Duke University Health System, Inc. and LifePoint Hospitals.
PMH's board of trustees approved a non-binding memorandum of understanding that allows the 110-bed, community owned hospital and Duke LifePoint to negotiate the acquisition, PMC said.
"Over the last several months, our Board has been working to develop a strategic plan that will effectively strengthen our hospital for the future," Robby Jones, chairman of the PMH Board of Trustees, said in a media release. "As we explored our options to secure the future of the hospital to continue to serve the people of Person County, it became clear that an affiliation would be critical to the future of our hospital. As we explored our partnering options, Duke LifePoint emerged as a great fit for our hospital. Duke LifePoint shares our commitment to our employees and medical staff, to quality healthcare and clinical operations and to the community. We look forward to examining this proposed partnership further in the weeks to come."
Duke LifePoint is a joint venture formed last year between Duke University Health System and LifePoint Hospitals to create a network of affiliated community hospitals throughout North Carolina. The venture combines Brentwood, TN-based LifePoint's operational resources and management of community-based hospitals with Duke's clinical and quality services expertise. If the deal is finalized, PMH will become the second hospital in the Duke LifePoint network. The first hospital, Maria Parham Medical Center in Henderson, NC, entered the affiliation in January.
"Person Memorial Hospital is a great asset to the Roxboro community," said William F. Carpenter III, Chairman/CEO of LifePoint Hospitals. "Duke LifePoint has been very impressed with the hospital, and we look forward to learning more about its staff and community. We are delighted to have the opportunity to be a part of this facility's future and to partner with it to address changing healthcare needs within Person County and surrounding areas and help the hospital and its community grow and prosper."
The affiliation will give PMH access to Duke LifePoint's clinical, operational and financial resources, and is expected to bolster physician recruiting and investment in new technology and capital improvements at the hospital.
A local board of trustees and physician advisory council will be created to ensure local involvement and governance of the hospital. Proceeds from the proposed sale could be used to create a community foundation that will support local non-profit organizations.
"Duke has had a management relationship with Person Memorial for 13 years, and we are pleased to have the opportunity to expand this relationship through Duke LifePoint," said William J. Fulkerson, Jr., MD, executive vice president of Duke University Health System. "The medical staff and employees at PMH have a strong commitment to clinical excellence and patient satisfaction, and we look forward to the prospect of working together to further strengthen the delivery of healthcare services to the community."
The due diligence process is expected to take approximately 60-90 days and will involve meetings with PMH employees and medical staff and members of the community. The transaction would require the approval of the North Carolina attorney general's office.
Healthcare job growth slowed considerably in May as compared with April and March, but the sector was one of the few bright spots in an otherwise anemic job report Friday from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Hospitals created 4,100 payroll additions in May, after posting 10,100 new jobs in April, and 10,200 new jobs in March. In 2011, hospitals have created 36,200 new jobs, compared with 11,800 new jobs in the first five months of 2010, BLS data and preliminary data show.
The healthcare sector – everything from hospitals to podiatrists' offices to kidney dialysis centers – created 17,400 new jobs in May, after posting 37,290 new jobs in April, 34,400 new jobs in March, and 124,400 new jobs in 2011. Healthcare created 95,100 new jobs in the first five months of 2010, BLS data and preliminary data show.
The healthcare sector accounted for slightly more than 14 million jobs in May, with more than 4.7 million jobs at hospitals, more than 6.1 million jobs in ambulatory services, and more than 2.3 million in physicians' offices, BLS preliminary data show.
Ambulatory services accounted for more than half of the new jobs created in the healthcare sector in 2011, with 10,100 new jobs in May, 21,500 new jobs in April, and 67,200 new jobs in so far this year. Ambulatory services created more than 69,600 new jobs in the first five months of 2010, BLS data and preliminary data show.
Physicians' offices reported 2,200 payroll additions in May, down considerably when compared with the 6,900 new payroll additions reported in April, and 8,700 new jobs in March. Physicians' offices have created 22,500 new jobs in 2011, compared with 6,900 new jobs in the first five months of 2010.
BLS data from April and May are preliminary and may be considerably revised in the coming months.
The healthcare sector continues to be one of the few areas of job growth in the economy. Since the start of the recession in December 2007, healthcare employment has grown by 943,600 jobs, while total nonfarm employment has fallen by about 6.9 million, BLS data show.
Nonfarm job growth in the larger U.S. economy slowed considerably in May, with 54,000 additions reported, well below increases that averaged 220,000 new jobs for April, March, and February. The nation's unemployment rate remained essentially unchanged at 9.1%, with 13.9 million people unemployed. The number of long-term unemployed -- people jobless for 27 weeks or longer – was 6.2 million in May, an increase of 361,000 from April, as their ranks increased from 43.4% to 45.1% of the unemployed, BLS preliminary data show.
James L. Madara, MD, was introduced Thursday as the next executive vice president/CEO of the American Medical Association. He vowed to "refocus" the nation's largest, oldest physicians' organization on its "core mission" of promoting medicine and the public health.
Madara, 60, a pathologist and the former CEO of the University of Chicago Medical Center, takes over an organization that has struggled with declining and fractious membership over the past several years, especially after the AMA's controversial decision last year to support healthcare reform.
In addition, the AMA has failed to secure a permanent fix for its top priority -- the nettlesome annual Sustainable Growth Rate fight, and that has left physicians staring at a potential 29.5% Medicare reimbursement cut in 2012. That has left many questioning the AMA's lobbying skills in Washington, DC.
Speaking with a handful of reporters during a Thursday teleconference, Madara offered few details on how he will address those and other pressing issues when he takes over the AMA's top administrative job on July 1.
When asked, for example, how he hopes to increase AMA membership, Madara spoke at length but offered no specifics. "What keeps physicians bound to a group is largely the reason why they entered the field to begin with, and that is to provide care for those that are ill and keep those that are healthy, healthy," he said. "This is an enduring feature of the field. With the current uncertainty, addressing this uncertainty with physicians' passions is important and it lines up exactly with the mission statement to promote the art and science of medicine and the betterment of public health. That mission statement and activities that align physicians' voices so they reflect the altruistic reasons for which they entered medicine will be the binding agent that keeps the group together and attracts people to the AMA."
When pressed on specific plans to boost AMA membership, such as advertising campaigns or membership drives, Madara said: "We are going to work on the substantive questions that are the big issues for physicians in general. For example when one looks at the plan for 2011 on our Web site, the issues of quality, the issues of access, the issues of creating a situation where physicians have sustainable practices are first and foremost on our minds."
Madara called the division in the ranks at AMA over the healthcare reform law "healthy debate."
"Among any group that is passionate about what it does and passionate about the practice of healthcare in America, there is going to be disagreement," he said. "We see disagreement on all sides. The AMA is a democratic organization where we move policy and the House of Delegates decides policy based on democratic principles that will never be 100% agreement. I think we see this in any organization that touches healthcare at this present time. What I detect in my early entry is nothing more than a very healthy debate looking at different views concerning something of fundamental importance to our nation and the health of our nation."
As for any perceived miscommunications between the AMA's Chicago headquarters and its lobbyists in Washington, D.C., Madara deferred to Ardis Dee Hoven, MD, chair of the AMA board. She rejected any suggestions of a disconnect between the two offices. "We work hand in hand, with our DC folks. They are part of us," Hoven told reporters on the conference call.
Madara was asked about his controversial leadership during his 2002-2009 tenure as CEO at the University of Chicago Medical Center, especially his role in creating the Urban Health Initiative. The program sparked controversy when it redirected patients with less-severe injuries or illnesses at UCMC crowded emergency department into community hospitals and clinics. He said any criticism of the initiative has to be placed in context of the time and place.
"At its core was an effort to improve health and access to care for the communities of indigent and underserved patients," he said. "Recall the context on the Southside was the collapse of several hospitals including famous hospitals like Michael Reese. We had to find new ways of providing care."
"In many ways the effort we deployed was ahead of its time," he said. "It focused on wellness and prevention and connecting patients to the care they needed in an appropriate setting. It looked to improve the coordination of care, the continuity of care, to ensure that patients had a medical home. There were challenging issues in this but I have to say it was not pushing out, it was reaching out. Our physicians and students went to clinics, went to community hospitals, opened new beds, and created new resources. My experience with this program and the lessons learned in it will serve me well in this new role with the AMA."
In addition to his time at UCMC, Madara served as Timmie Professor and Chair of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the Emory University School of Medicine before assuming the Thompson Distinguished Service Professorship and deanship at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine.
After resigning from the University of Chicago Medical Center in August 2009, Madara joined Leavitt Partners, a healthcare consulting firm created by former Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt.
Online job ads for healthcare practitioners and technical workers tapered off in May, the second straight month of declines, but there were still nearly three jobs available for every highly skilled healthcare professional looking for work, according to The Conference Board Help Wanted Onlinereport.
Labor demand for healthcare practitioners and technical occupations fell by 3,400 listings in April to 565,100. The drop was led by declines in advertised vacancies for speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists, and physical therapists. Healthcare support positions grew by 4,100 new listings to 133,200 in April, even though there were declines in openings for physical and occupational therapist assistants, The Conference Board reports.
The board's Help Wanted Online Data Series tracks more than 1,000 online job boards across the United States.
Even with May's decline in online job listings, there were nearly three jobs for every healthcare technician and practitioner job seeker, with an average salary of $34.27 an hour. Conversely, there were 1.9 healthcare support workers for every online job listing, with pay averaging $12.94 an hour, The Conference Board reports.
Online job listings in healthcare continue to yo-yo from month to month. In April, labor demand for healthcare practitioners and technical occupations fell by 28,600 listings to 568,500, while support positions fell by 11,400 new listings to 129,100 for the month. In March, healthcare practitioners and technical occupations grew by 3,700, and healthcare support positions posted 4,400 new listings, with the primary demand coming for physical therapist assistants, home health aides, nursing aides, and medical assistants.
In January, The Conference Board reported 78,500 new listings for healthcare practitioners and technicians, and 16,600 new ads for healthcare support jobs, as healthcare jobs led a strong first month of 2011. However, February saw online job ads for practitioners and technical occupations drop by 4,300 owing largely to decreases in advertised vacancies for registered nurses and occupational and physical therapists, while support positions posted a decrease of 4,200.
In the overall economy, labor demand rose to a "pre-recession monthly high" of 4.5 million online advertised vacancies in May, up 148,000 listings from April, The Conference Board reports. "Overall, the trend in online advertised vacancies has been positive this year," June Shelp, vice president at The Conference Board, said in a media release. "Following the large increase of 526,000 in January, over the next four months the increase in advertised vacancies has averaged 66,000 per month. While we have now returned to the pre-recession levels of labor demand, the big difference today is the larger number of unemployed workers that are seeking jobs compared to four years ago."
In April 2011 there were 3.18 unemployed for every advertised vacancy, in contrast to the 1.5 unemployed for every vacancy in April 2007, Shelp said, and labor demand is still uneven across occupations.
Heart and lung transplants that are done at night have no affect on patient survival, despite concerns about surgeon fatigue, a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association has found.
"We aren't suggesting that fatigue is good," Ashish S. Shah, MD, an assistant professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the study's lead author, said in a media release. "But what is important is that, at least in this specialty, it seems we're able to deal with it without subjecting the patient to risk."
The research covers 10 years of heart and lung transplants — more than 27,000 — at medical centers across the country.
"This is one of the first papers to suggest that fatigue, sleep deprivation, and odd hours really don't hurt the patient. It's a surprising finding," Shah said. "While we've felt this, other papers have suggested patients are at risk if they are treated at night. For patients undergoing heart and lung transplants, everything is fine — regardless of the hour, our study shows."
Heart and lung transplants are done whenever organs become available, without regard for the time or how much work a surgeon has already done that day, Shah said.
Previous studies have linked nighttime care with worse outcomes. One study found that nighttime cardiac arrests were associated with lower survival and unfavorable neurological outcomes. Another found that urgent orthopedic surgery at night was linked to a higher rate of unplanned reoperation. A third found that nighttime kidney transplantation was associated with higher risk of graft failure and the need for more emergency reoperation.
Shah said it would not have been surprising to find the same issues with heart and lung transplants. But Shah's research found that the rate of reoperation was the same regardless of operative time of the day. The team also found that hospital length of stay was the same no matter what time the surgery took place.
The Johns Hopkins researchers reviewed United Network of Organ Sharing data on all adult heart and lung transplants in the United States between January 2000 and June 2010. Of the 16,573 who underwent heart transplants, half were done during the day and half at night. After one year, the survival rate for heart transplants was 88% for daytime recipients and 87.7% for those who got their new hearts at night. Researchers categorized daytime operations as those where the critical portion of the surgery took place during the day. Successful heart transplants can take as many as five to 10 hours to complete, said Shah, a cardiac surgeon.
For the 10,545 lung transplants, roughly half were done during the day and half at night. After one year, 83.8% of those who got their organs during the day were still alive, compared to 82.6% of those who had their surgeries at night.
Shah said the success in heart and lung transplant outcomes, no matter the time of day, is a testament to experienced transplant teams who have learned to effectively perform complex surgeries on sick patients, despite fatigue and emotional stress.
He said the new findings show the need for more outcomes research. Without specifically looking at the question of fatigue and medical errors in heart and lung transplants, the assumption would have been that these surgeries are less safe when done at night. "It's worth asking these questions rather than extrapolating the conclusions from other specialties," he said.
Heart and lung transplant teams could serve as a model for others, Shah said, and researchers may learn something from examining why they are so successful and using that knowledge to improve outcomes in other specialties.
More than half of emergency physicians in a recent poll say they practice defensive medicine to protect themselves from lawsuits.
The survey from the American College of Emergency Physicians found that 44% of nearly 1,800 emergency physicians say the fear of lawsuits is the biggest challenge to cutting costs in the emergency department. And 53% say that fear of litigation drives many of the tests they order.
“Medical liability reform is essential to meaningful healthcare reform,” ACEP President Sandra Schneider, MD, said in a media release. “Without it, healthcare costs will continue to rise. Estimates on the costs of defensive medicine range from $60 billion to $151 billion per year. That dwarfs total expenditures on emergency care, which at $47.3 billion in 2008 represented just 2% of all healthcare spending.”
The poll also found that 68% of respondents said there has been no improvement in the number of medical specialists willing to take ED call since healthcare reform legislation passed last year. Many specialists cite the fear of being sued as one of the top reasons.
“Texas offers us a great example of the benefits of tort reform,” Schneider said. “After the state passed medical liability reform, 33 rural counties have added at least one emergency physician, including 24 counties that previously had none. Nationwide, according to the Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research, states with caps on non-economic damages saw a 3% to 4% decrease in healthcare costs.” Schneider said patient safety has improved in Texas since liability reform.
“Texas has achieved the second biggest improvement for emergency department wait times among all 50 states, according to a 2010 report from Press Ganey,” Schneider said. “Despite growing demand and the highest uninsured population in the nation, Texas improved access to medical care for emergency patients by enacting tort reform.”
ACEP supports two liability reform bills in the U.S. House of Representatives, H.R. 5 and H.R. 157. H.R. 157 would extend the same legal protection that physicians in the Public Health Service have to physicians who care for patients in the ED. Emergency physicians are required by federal law to treat all patients, and often treat time-sensitive patients without any knowledge of their medical history. H.R. 5 recently cleared through the House Energy and Commerce Committee and will come up for a floor vote soon.
Schneider also raised an issue related to the development of quality measures for medical care, some of which are designed to discourage the overuse of testing.
“The federal government is making great efforts to implement quality measures, but without federal medical liability reform, physicians following the guidelines developed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) may open themselves to litigation,” Schneider said. “For example, under new CMS guidelines, the use of head CTs is being discouraged. Fewer head CTs will mean that physicians miss maybe 1% of serious head bleeds. So a small percentage of people with head bleeds will be missed, and there are no liability protections for those physicians who may be sued as a result.”
The second largest challenge to cutting costs reported by poll respondents (19.8 %) is the increase in uninsured patients, because no physicians will treat them.
ACEP conducted the poll in early March. E-mails were sent to 20,687 emergency physicians, and 1,768 responded. The survey has a theoretical sampling error range of plus/minus 2.23. To download a copy of the complete ACEP poll results, click here.
Peninsula Regional Medical Center in Salisbury, MD has joined the Johns Hopkins Clinical Research Network, a collaborative of academic researchers and community-based medical centers which expands patient access to clinical trials.
"This takes research and population studies to a whole other level for our region," Peggy Naleppa, president/CEO of Peninsula Regional Medical Center, tells HealthLeaders Media. "Our coverage population is about 450,000 people. This means that for our community of six counties, our residents will have access to some of the top clinical trials in the nation through this network."
The network was established by Johns Hopkins Medicine in 2009 and includes Anne Arundel Medical Center, in Annapolis, MD, Greater Baltimore Medical Center, Inova Health System in Northern Virginia, and the medical centers of Johns Hopkins Medicine.
The network tackles the complexities of multisite and multi-institutional trials by providing investigators with a larger patient pool and common research protocols, with the goal of speeding the approval of new -- and safe -- clinical trials.
Naleppa says the affiliation will be a valuable recruiting tool for PRMC. "We learned from Arundel and Greater Baltimore that this is an attractive option for future physicians in terms of building physician programs and recruitment efforts," she says. "Good quality physicians are attracted to strong quality organizations that have standards of excellence. That is an important point for us."
The network started with a focus on cancer-related clinical trials, but it has expanded to diabetes and surgical studies. Future collaborations will include pediatrics; intensive care; cardiovascular, neuropsychiatric, brain and spine diseases; and radiology and nuclear medicine studies, Naleppa says.
The news of the research initiative comes one day after Civista Health System in Charles County, MD, announced that it would become an affiliate of the University of Maryland Medical System. Naleppa cautions against looking for a similar announcement between Johns Hopkins and PRMC.
"Hospitals in general will look at strengthening collaborative relationships, but in our case we are very sound financially," she says. "We are the flagship facility for the eastern shore. We have already built a significant amount of our IT infrastructure, which is a capital demand that is driving integration for many health systems. Our position has been that we will remain the flagship tertiary care center for the area and strengthen our collaborative relationships, as opposed to financial mergers."
Naleppa said PRMC will "keep options open" for strengthening training programs with Johns Hopkins, and with the University of Maryland, but, "we don't have anything definite."
