Four Preview Videos in the Footer
Cathy O’Neil, Mathematician/Quant: Wall Street Quants The Culture, Big Data Mechanics, Algorithms, Data Mining, Lack of Privacy, Web Profiling, Health Insurance Profiles and Modeling Abuse…
This is pretty good and I felt compelled to include this as she’s the one before the programmers, in other words, Quants build models and programmers design and build it. In both videos you will find a lot of answers as she’s good and if you read here then you have probably heard a lot of this from…
FDA Approves New Drug for Multi-Drug Resistant Tuberculosis, Sirturo –First New Drug in 40 Years for TB
Amongst all the recalls Johnson and Johnson has had a good year with FDA approvals including this one as there has not bee anything new approved in years. There is an inhaled TB vaccine in the works from a few years back. Inhaled Tuberculosis Vaccine More Effective Than Traditional Shot …
Hospital Facility Fees Up for Discussion Again as Out of Pocket Costs Rise for Patients When Hospitals Buy Physician Practices And Appear to be Growing
Facility fees are allowed by Medicare for hospitals to charge and these are tacked on, separate from medical services received. More and more of these types of charges are appearing on medical bills, especially ones set up for outpatient services. Sometimes insurers do not pay the fees and thus so…
As The Fiscal Cliff Approaches, Time To Reflect With A Little Music For Thought: “This Is Not America”
There was a move made a while back called “The Falcon and the Snowman” and it was about who selling America out and it was a good movie and the soundtrack alone was equally as good as the movie and one song that sticks in my brain today is this one as a “normal” environment we have known for yea…
Dr. Oz on Technology and Doctors–It’s Not About Medicine Depending Technology And Not Doctors But Rather About Developing an Awareness of Tools & Technology That Have Value And Are Available…
This was a very “touch” interview of sorts. He makes good points as far as having “public” systems available with technology. Very carefully the word “nudge” is used which I think is the right terminology. He’s right with the new tools we have coming out but I don’t think the title here for this int…
FDA Clears Drug Eliquis For the Prevention of Strokes, Alternative for Warfarin For Anti-Clotting–3rd Time is the Charm
The drug was twice denied approval and the FDA wanted additional data before approval could take place. Patients with artificial heart valves should not take the drug as it was not studied in that population yet. Bristol-Meyers Squibb is the manufacturer and it will be co-marketed with Pfizer. Th…
Aetna Fined $1 Million by State of Washington for Insurance Violations–Sounds Like Automated Algorithm Issues With Editing Compliance & Marketing Integration, Included Dental Plans Sold to Nordstrom
Some of the violations go back to 2005 when all the data systems we use today were not as sophisticated. One area is in compliance that did not contain all the information required by the state law so the normal fix would be to update the IT infrastructure to either amend or send updates to policy …
Niche Health Insurance Company Files for IPO–Uses Cloud Based Platform for Algorithmic Consumer Shopping, Underwritten by Banks
My first thoughts here are to look at the underwriters, Citi and BofA Merrill Lynch? The company plans to go on Nasdaq so we have banks here with algorithms and software getting into the health insurance business? It appears there’s a client base with the numbers quoted. In looking at the web…
Health Net Stops Covering Medical Services at 6 Southern California Tenet Hospitals in the OC and Desert Areas –Reimbursement Contract Differences
The hospitals affected are owned by Tenet in the desert and also in Orange County. You can read the article below to see where the talks failed with Tenet wanting higher rates and Health Net had their own ideas of rate increases being tied to the consumer price index. Medi-Cal was also in the pict…
AMA Reaches Out to Doctors To Remind Them Patient Welfare Must Come First As Rising Pressures From Insurers and Hospitals Can Surmount At Times
This went out as a reminder as many more doctors are working directly for hospitals and some have “goals” they somewhat enforce as the pinch for money and profits grows. Doctors normally get paid a salary from a hospital with a bonus tied in somewhere, the old pay for performance routine that insur…
FDA Approves Xpert CT/NG Rapid Detection Test for Gonorrhea and Chlamydia To Enable Same Day Treatment Upon Diagnosis
Gonorrhea and Chlamydia with the use of the test and lab equipment from Cepheid can now have results in around 90 minutes. In addition the company has several other tests that function similarly with quick results. This is pretty interesting to watch the video to see how the process works and…
“Data Scientists”– An Oxymoron? Is Finding the Value in Data Bases Queried Together in the Business World To Make Money Actually Science?
What really is a data scientist? I guess someone along the line had to come up with a name so those folks who understand queries and big data systems could be given a name. The term Data Scientist is not to be confused with Computer Science as we are talking two very different and distinc…
Metropolitan Chicago Healthcare Council Medical Record Exchange Could Collapse, Too Much Money to Develop and Participate For Many
As always it comes back to money. You can read the article and see where nobody denies the value but how do you get the value when the dollars are not there. I think more and more areas of Health IT will be asking the same question. This is not to be confused with “insurance exchanges” in thi…
Government Urges Software Companies to Find and Document Patient Harm Resulting From Electronic Medical Records–Checking Algorithms & Hey, Whatever Happened to the Common User Interface?
When this question is posed, how can medical records cause patient harm? First of all there is the user interface and every EHR/EMR has one as that’s how the information is viewed and entered, software 101. Now there’s nothing intentional here with vendors as hours, days, weeks and more are spent …
Christmas Day Tornado Damages Mobile Alabama Infirmary Hospital
I don’t know if anyone was in the bed or not but this shook things up pretty well at the hospital it looks like. There were quite a few homes damaged and so far no casualties yet listed. Many were sitting down to Christmas dinner when the tornado hit. No patients were harmed and the hospital …
St. Johns Hospital Saga Continues As Options Are Weighed As Ownership and Future Discussions Take Place
Los Angeles billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, a hospital supporter who has committed $100 million to St. John's and has his name on several buildings was shocked when the CEO and board recently were fired by the current Catholic out of state owners as it was in the works to sell the hospital. Soon-…
Inhaled Drug for Treating Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder Gets FDA Approval–Adasuve
The drug is known as a rapid antipsychotic treatment and was turned down back in 2010 as the FDA was concerned about the side effects, bronchial spasms. This is interesting when you read this article as they were just about out of money if I an reading this correctly and were trying to find a buyer…
FDA Approves Drug for Inherited High Levels of Bad Cholesterol - Juxtapid
We have enough people with high cholesterol and now there’s a treatment for those who have a genetic condition that promotes high bad cholesterol and this has a big warning for potential liver damage. This is interesting as I would think that any drug in the statin area would do the trick; however …
FDA Sends Letter to 350 Clinics About Non Approved Botox From Canada
Quality Specialty Products (QSP), A+ Health Supplies, QP Medical, Bridgewater Medical or Clinical Care are the names of the suppliers in Canada and it could be counterfeit. These are non approved FDA sources and there were quite a few in California listed. The link below gives the listings of all …
Curēus, New Open-Source Medical Journal Created by Stanford Neurosurgeon John Adler,Scientific Research More Readily Available, Peer To Peer Reviews
All publications are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which is great as that’s what I use for the Medical Quack. Curēus is always free for both publishers and readers and is indexed on Google and Bing. In addition they also have a blog for additional information outside of …
Niacin Is Out As Far As Protecting Against Heart Attacks As Merck Drug Fails Large Clinical Trial- No Benefit When Prescribed With Statins
This was quite a large trial with 25k patients followed over 4 years and some encountered serious harm, but Merck has not let us know yet what the “harm” was except that it was not fatal. All patients were also taking statins to reduce cholesterol. Tredaptive, the drug from Merck was a combination…
Merck, Roche and Sanofi Working to Develop Drugs to Target More Than One Type of Cancer
Right now it is important to know the origin of cancer, in other words is it breast cancer or kidney cancer that migrated to the lungs. The targets to treat are very specific and thus we have read stories of patients being given the wrong medication with treating “lung” cancer that originated in th…
NYU To Offer Medical Students Shorter Training, One Year Less, Saves Tuition & Gets New Doctors in Practice Sooner
I wrote about this a while back with some schools in Texas offering the same 3 years instead of four and actually from what I have read here in this article and others, it seems to be working and readily accepted. As a medical student who would not want to incur more education debt? I can’t think …
Online Retailers Using “High Frequency Type Algorithms” and IP Locations to Change Prices On Product Offerings, Business Intelligence Based on Consumer Data Mining and Scraping–Attack of the Killer Algorithms Part 52
As data mining and scraping consumer information grows by leaps and bounds so does the intelligence on what they determine you are going to be shown as a price for a product. The store as an example here for most of this article is Staples. So much for everyone being offered the same price for the…
