Eye-care firms continue to be a hot target this year as pharmaceutical and medical-device firms see a growing market for ophthalmology procedures.
Abbott Laboratories, the Illinois-based medical-device giant, is shelling out $250 million for OptiMedica Corp., which makes technology for laser-assisted cataract surgery.
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Emergency department doctors are being blamed for prescribing painkillers like OxyContin to drug-seeking patients, and 48 states have created or passed laws to create prescription drug monitoring programs to help identify who they are.
But a new study by the American College of Emergency Physicians found that clinicians actually prescribed more painkillers for alleged drug-seeking patients—identified as those who seek painkillers from four or more different clinicians or hospitals in a twelve-month period—after checking with the monitoring programs.
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Rogue Internet pharmacies dispense medications without prescriptions, sell drugs that are counterfeit, expired or improperly labeled, and violate a slew of other laws, a new Government Accountability Office report says.
Such pharmacies have led to investigations by state and federal regulators, who told the GAO that there are “substantial challenges” in investigating and prosecuting these outfits, many of which are internationally based.
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The CDC calls its mini-reports "VitalSigns."
Here is something from their latest:
Accidental deaths among women who overuse prescription drugs are rapidly rising, with a fivefold increase in deaths from abuse of opioid painkillers leading the way, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports in its latest Morbidity and Mortality Weekly report. In 2010, there were 15,323 deaths among women from drug overdoses—a rate of 9.8 for every 100,000 women.
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The healthcare spending slump isn't just a U.S. phenomenon.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reports that healthcare spending increased less than 2% in 2011 among its 32 member nations, with the sharpest slowdowns being felt in those countries hit hardest by the economic crisis. Spending fell in 2010.
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NPR's “Morning Edition” contained a long report from ProPublica noting that many of the physicians listed as top prescribers for specific drugs also took in large speaking fees from the drug manufacturers.
The investigative non-profit news operation compared Medicare claims data from 2010 to drug company reports on their physician payments—about 16 have had to make such disclosures to settle government fraud investigations.
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The editor of the Journal of the Medical Association has peeled back a controversial rule adopted three years ago to protect the integrity of clinical trials.
Dr. Howard Bauchner, in an editorial posted online, wrote that requiring outside academic biostatisticians to review the findings of industry-funded clinical trials will no longer be a requirement for publication. "Advances over the past decade in standards of clinical trial reporting, enhanced understanding of the threats to validity of clinical research, increasing data transparency, and our experience support the change in policy," he wrote.
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Physicians overwhelmed by the “firehose” of new medical information pouring from medical journals need docents to guide them through the recommendations, writes Dr. Jerry Avorn, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in today's New York Times.
"Take, for example, the recommendations issued recently by the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists on caring for patients with diabetes. The AACE's latest guidelines elevate many second- or third-line drugs to more prominent positions in the prescribing hierarchy, rivaling once uncontested go-to medications like metformin, an inexpensive generic. They also emphasize the riskiness of established treatments like insulin and glipizide, which now carry yellow warning labels in the AACE summary.
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