By Lola Butcher October 25, 2010 As the healthcare industry embarks on a period of historic change, leadership is needed more than ever, says Adam Singer, M.D., the chairman, CEO and chief medical officer of IPC-the Hospitalist Co. in North Hollywood, Calif. ... FULL STORY
By Shawn Rhea October 14, 2010 Devicemaker Medtronic, Minneapolis, will pay $268 million to settle lawsuits relating to defects in its Sprint Fidelis defibrillation leads, according to a news release. ... FULL STORY
By Shawn Rhea October 11, 2010 It has been more than 50 years since Thomas Fogarty, M.D., then a medical student at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine and a scrub technician at the nearby Good Samaritan Hospital, used a knotting technique created by fly fishermen to attach the fingertip of a surgical glove to a... ... FULL STORY
February 22, 2010 Physician groups and other industry stakeholders say they're ready to work with the Food and Drug Administration on its newly announced initiative to reduce patient exposure to excess radiation during imaging procedures. But some expressed uncertainty about whether one or more of the agency's... ... FULL STORY
By Shawn Rhea February 22, 2010 The reactions were swift, vocal and emotionally charged last November when the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force uprooted years of firmly entrenched advice that women 40 and older receive annual mammograms to screen for breast cancer. ... FULL STORY
December 28, 2009 The Food and Drug Administration's expanding investigation into why some patients undergoing CT perfusion brain scans have received excessive amounts of radiation highlights a need for tighter, more uniform dosage guidelines and equipment standardization, say some imaging experts familiar with the... ... FULL STORY
By Jean DerGurahian August 24, 2009 In the past year, Wellmont Health System has taken a hard look at its operating numbers, and decided things aren't adding up. After conducting audits and restating some previous financial reports, the health system is initiating cost-saving measures to improve performance. ... FULL STORY
February 23, 2009 Plans to funnel $1.1 billion through a stimulus provision to federal health agencies in an effort to compare drugs, medical devices and even procedures have come under fire by some policy analysts who say the government is ill-equipped to lead such efforts. ... FULL STORY
February 09, 2009 A report suggests that the use of the World Health Organization's pre-surgical safety checklist leads to an 11% decline in the number of post-surgical complications—including a 1.5% drop in the ultimate complication: death. ... FULL STORY
By Shawn Rhea January 26, 2009 A CMS proposal to expand Medicare coverage of PET scans that are used to diagnose and determine stages of cancer may provide a clinical boon to patients and some increased reimbursement opportunities for physicians and hospitals, but providers aren’t likely to rush out and buy the equipment if the... ... FULL STORY
December 17, 2007 Medical-profession associations appear on payment-disclosure lists posted on orthopedic-device makers’ Web sites, prompting some policymakers to suggest the payments are further evidence of how far-reaching industry influence is on medicine. ... FULL STORY
December 03, 2007 Some critics of vendor-marketing practices are questioning whether a $311 million settlement to end a long-running physician-kickback case will do much to curb influence-peddling between devicemakers and docs. ... FULL STORY
November 19, 2007 A study showing medical institutions are as likely to sign up for financial relationships with industry as individual docs and researchers will likely spur greater scrutiny of those arrangements, but experts say a wholesale ban is unlikely. ... FULL STORY
October 05, 2007 The National Children’s Study, a joint effort between HHS and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, awarded contracts to 22 new study centers to manage participant recruitment and data collection nationwide. The study was developed in response to the Children’s Health Act of 2000, when Congress... ... FULL STORY
April 02, 2007 The growing trend toward "at home" care and the technology that enables will affect a broad swath of healthcare workers. While the first impact will be on geriatric-care managers, it will spread to home healthcare agencies and chains, disease management specialists, physicians and... ... FULL STORY
