02.14.2016 Most never disciplined by state boards after institutional sanctions by John Commins HealthLeaders Media State medical boards are not protecting the public from doctors who’ve committed sexual misconduct, one watchdog group has said. According to a Public Citizen study published this month in PLOS ONE, 70% of physicians (177 out of 253) who had […]
2/5/2016 BY AMANDA LEE MYERS ASSOCIATED PRESS LOS ANGELES (AP) — A Los Angeles-area doctor convicted of second-degree murder for prescribing pain killers that killed three patients was sentenced Friday to 30 years to life in prison in a landmark case that many in the medical community believe will create a chilling effect among physicians […]
By MELISSA BAILEY FEBRUARY 1, 2016 Hospitals and doctors’ offices nationwide might have avoided nearly 2,000 patient deaths — and $1.7 billion in malpractice costs — if medical staff and patients communicated better, a report released Monday has found. Communication failures were a factor in 30 percent of the malpractice cases examined by CRICO Strategies, a […]
Robert Lowes January 21, 2016 The pain management clinic on Southern Boulevard in the Bronx, New York City, was called “the zoo” — a place where addicts, fake patients, and armed drug traffickers thronged, fought, and walked away with millions of oxycodone pills. The clinic’s owner, Kevin Lowe, MD, did not write the bogus prescriptions […]
Published: January 21, 2016 12:44 pm More than 25 people from Texas and Louisiana are accused of being involved in a “pill mill” operation that hired homeless people to pose as patients and obtain prescriptions for pain killer medications, authorities say. Four of the suspects, including a Dallas doctor and an Arlington pharmacist, were arrested […]
Laird Harrison January 20, 2016 Vomiting, behavior changes, and sleep disturbances each affect about one child in 20 taking a short course of oral corticosteroids, a new study shows. Moreover, almost one in 100 gets an infection while receiving the commonly prescribed medications, researchers say. “We should perhaps alert families of children taking short-course corticosteroids […]
POSTED 1:44 PM, JANUARY 19, 2016, BY JEREMY TANNER, UPDATED AT 09:57PM, JANUARY 19, 2016 NEW YORK – A Mount Sinai doctor turned himself in to the Manhattan Special Victims Division Tuesday after a patient accused him of sexually assaulting her. David Newman, a prominent doctor and author, is expected to be charged with sex […]
Illegal kickbacks, nearly $600 million in fraudulent billing, alleges DOJ By Editorial Staff Dynamic Chiropractic – January 15, 2016, Vol. 34, Issue 02 All too often, where there’s substantial money to be made, greed and corruption inevitably follow. Such appears to be the case in the world of spine surgery, with the Department of Justice […]
Popul Health Metr. 2016 Jan 15;14:2. doi: 10.1186/s12963-016-0071-7. eCollection 2016. Ruhm CJ. Abstract BACKGROUND: Drug poisoning mortality in the US has risen rapidly but the drugs involved are frequently unspecified on death certificates. METHODS: Reported and adjusted proportions of specific drug types involved in fatal drug poisonings were calculated using vital statistics mortality data from […]
Date: January 12, 2016 Source: Saint Louis University Summary: Opioids may cause short-term improvement in mood, but long-term use imposes risk of new-onset depression, a new study shows. The link was independent of the known contribution of pain to depression, and the study calls on clinicians to consider the contribution of opioid use when depressed […]
Nancy A. Melville January 12, 2016 Use of antidepressants is linked to an increased risk for the development of first-time cerebral microbleeds, results of a longitudinal study show. “In this population-based study, we found that antidepressant use was associated with an increased risk of incident first-ever microbleeds after 4 years of follow-up,” the authors, led […]
POSTED:JAN 08 2016 04:51PM CST UPDATED:JAN 08 2016 04:52PM CST Harris County Sheriff’s Office Crimes Against Children unit investigators have arrested and charged a defendant for the sexual abuse and sexual assault of four children . Investigators stated , that 37 year old Ricky Haywood-Watson committed the offense of Super Aggravated Sexual Assault of a […]
Tara Haelle January 06, 2016 Two thirds of women receiving medication for osteoporosis potentially did not need treatment, according to a retrospective cohort study published online January 4 in JAMA Internal Medicine. In fact, half of these women with possibly inappropriate prescriptions were younger and without risk factors that would have indicated screening, found Joshua […]
BY MARY OTTO | JANUARY 4, 2016 In a recent seven-part series for the Dallas Morning News, investigative reporter Brooks Egerton explores dental treatments that have ended tragically and gaps in the enforcement system that is supposed to hold the nation’s dentists accountable. The Deadly Dentistry series opens with the story of a 4-year-old Dallas boy, […]
Janis C. Kelly December 21, 2015 A notable disregard for basic vaccine safety that included reuse of syringes for influenza vaccinations given to employees at a New Jersey company sparked a massive, multiagency scramble to determine whether any of the vaccine recipients had been infected with HIV, hepatitis C virus, or hepatitis B virus as […]
Judith A. Racoosin, M.D., M.P.H, Sally M. Seymour, M.D., Laurelle Cascio, Pharm.D., and Rajdeep Gill, Pharm.D. N Engl J Med 2015; 373:2299-2301December 10, 2015DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp1511754 At times, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) must grapple with safety concerns related to off-label uses of FDA-approved medications. Over the past several years, we have sought to understand […]
David Katz, M.D. Posted: 14/11/2015 07:38 AEST A recent report in JAMA Internal Medicine highlights prevailing medical practices that should be “reconsidered” in 2015 based on the weight of evidence. The paper, appropriately, is written in the matter-of-fact style customary for the peer-reviewed literature. To some extent, that semblance of analytical calm belies the storm […]
Marcia Frellick November 12, 2015 Proton-pump inhibitors are commonly used in hospitals to prevent gastrointestinal (GI) bleeding, but may increase the risk of dying both for those who start use in the hospital and for those have used them before admission and continue use in the hospital, new data show. Matt Pappas, MD, MPH, from […]