Four Preview Videos in the Footer
Insurers Add 4th Tier to Prescription Pricing–Higher Costs for Patients–Attack of the Killer Algorithms Part 31 As That is What Calculates the Cost
Well we all know that once you leave tier one and two the costs go up tremendously so when does tier five appear one might ask? The one man quoted in the article states that his HIV drugs went from $80 a month to $450 a month. One state, New York has banned tier four plans. There has to be…
Medical Quack Will Be Back Blogging Soon
I have just moved after 28 years in one house and what a move it was to include a nice spider bite from a brown recluse. I am lucky there that it is healing and didn’t leave a hole in my arm. Thanks again for all who visited the Quack during my absence here and you can again look forward to some …
Former FDA Commissioner Andrew Von Eschenbach Joins Another Board–Banyan Biomarkers
Banyan Biomarkers provides analytical services to pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology companies and investigators at academic research institutes. The company has a focus on traumatic brain injury and developing assays to qualify biomarkers. BD Former FDA leader von Eschenbach Named to…
MyMedicalRecords PHR 30 Day Account To Be Offered at Mickey Fine Pharmacy Chain in California
Who says the old traditions don’t mix with the new, and here’s an example of what is said to be the last pharmacy with a soda fountain in the store. If you under around 40 years old, you won’t know what one looked like as pharmacies today don’t have them any longer. MMR Global as you all know gain…
Blue Cross Venture - Blue Health Intelligence Proving to Be Very Costly And Received Another 9 Billion From Undisclosed Source–Subsidiary Watch
So far according to this article it has been hard to quantify the real dollar amounts that have been saved. We all know there’s a lot more data out there of course with the creation of the venture. Recently it was announced that the firm that manages the Blue Cross venture was moving to San Franci…
Pebble Watch–Companion for iPhone and Android As a Companion for mHealth Apps With Crowd Source Funding (Video)
This entire story is interesting in going just beyond what the watch does in the fact that it was funded by a company called Kickstarter. You can review the page and see the folks that pledged money to get the project off the ground here and this relates to the hot topic of crowd funding. All it t…
Congress Drops the Ball While Children Can’t Get Their Drugs for Cancer Treatment–And Many of the Cancers Can be Cured–Shame on Boehner’s Response–For 14 Months the Bill Has Been In the Works
Over a year ago the bills started and today drug shortages are still looming. The bill is stuck in the Senate, why does it take 14 months before anything begins to happen. The FDA commissioner, Dr. Margaret Hamburg has called for the law to put through so they can be notified when there are drug …
ReWalk Robot Enables Patients with Lower Limb Paralysis to Walk In Downey, CA–Only Hospital in the West That Has the System
This is very cool and it is FDA approved but costs a few dollars for sure. The hospital was lucky as they were the recipient of a donation to make this happen. You can read the back article below. and visit the news website here to see it in action. BD …
Illegal Drugs Smuggled Out of China Containing “Powdered Humans” or “Flesh Pills” Contain Bacteria and Are Dangerous–South Korea Steps Up the Fight to Battle With Documentary
This is just a yucky story all the way around but the summary of this is that the pills are supposedly sold/marketed at performance drugs and the Korean government even made a documentary about the topic. It is not known if any of these pills made it to the US. The flesh contained is from the fetu…
This is an interview asking the Governor how they are decreasing cost and he addresses the premium costs and states they are making progress. Fee for Service is discussed as it is all over the country. Limited networks plans encourage people to go to community settings he states. Not all of Harva…
Prime Healthcare Cited for Violating Patient Privacy
I think we all remember this story from a short while back with the CEO responding about a patient and making a little too much information available relative to her diabetes records. They were responding to a news report and it also ended up in the Los Angeles Times. Prime was already being watch…
UnitedHealthCare Found a New Way to Market Health Insurance – “High Performance Networks”
Well this is a new press release that came out and gee I thought everyone today was high performance so where are the low performance folks? I guess those are the ones who are not under contract? The official name is “SignatureValue Alliance” in California so I guess this means the doctors and ho…
Woman Buys A Box of Tampons at Close Out Bargain Store and Finds Cocaine–Obviously Not for Internal Use On This Box
This is one of those stories from the beyond and I worked in logistics for years and transportation companies used to have sales as such on lost products, damages, and so on relative to freight claims. After the company paid a claim for goods that could not be sold as new, this is very common to re…
Novartis Buys Generic Dermatology Company Fougera Pharma for $1.5 Billion
Sandoz is the generic division of Novartis and the acquisiton of Fougera will reside within this division it appears. The two companies already service some of the same accounts. BD Novartis is buying specialty dermatology generics firm Fougera Pharmaceuticals for $1.525 billion in cash…
Researcher At San Francisco VA Medical Center Dies After Handling Rare Strain of Bacteria–Was Working On a Vaccine for Meningitis
All who worked at the lab have all been vaccinated to protect as well as family members but according to the story here the vaccine would not have helped in his situation. This was fast as he woke with a rash and then died on the way to the hospital from a heart attack. Cal-OSHA is investigating a…
Class Action Lawsuit Filed Against Allscripts For Misleading Investors With Merging Data Systems–Too Much Code and Not Enough Time – Attack of the Killer Algorithms Chapter 30
Let’s start out with this, if one is a developer/coder this is probably not a great atmosphere to be in right now, I would not want to be working there writing code to integrate. I don’t know the entire insides and outs to intelligently talk specifically on some of this but do …
Komen Public Relations Vice President In Charge of Public Relations, Branding and Marketing Resigns–Business Intelligence Decisions/Marketing Not Popular With Consumers–Algorithm Attack #10 Revisited
I think we have reached a stage to where consumers are a bit tired of hearing “it was business decision” when those decisions cut care and funds that helped people. Sure it exists in other businesses but right now with the war on women’s health, not popular and myself I took their link off and repl…
Johnson and Johnson Acquires First Medical Device Company In China - Guangzhou Bioseal .
As the press release reads, this is a product used in China only and not in the US. The company will fall under the Ethicon division of J and J and produces a sealant used for adjunct hemostasis undergoing surgery, controls the bleeding when other methodologies are not sufficient. Ethicon bi…
Colbert Talks Accretive Care–Collections in the Hospital ER (Video) Attack of the Killer Algorithms Chapter 30!
The blue ball system Accretive uses..funny but you know what it’s about the Killer Algorithms once again. I’m glad he did this one as it needs attention as there’s more of this under the rafters that consumers don’t see. It’s all about the math and flawed data, and/or formulas created for profit, …
Practice Fusion Medical Records Launches First of It’s Kind Lab API Where Any Lab in the US Can Connect
This is pretty good and I remember back when I wrote an interface to work with Quest Labs that I about fell off my chair when it worked. That was back when HL7 was still in it’s infancy and creating the crosswalk at the time was a lot of work, for me anyway as I never done one before. Things a…
San Diego Hospitals Having Issues With Anthem Blue Cross Refusing Claims for Psychiatric Emergency Services–Attack of the Killer Algorithms Chapter 29
The California Hospital Association is involved here with stating there had been several complaints from providers. The story states that they have more denied claims from Blue Cross than all the other carriers combined. Mental health again is getting the short end of the stick. Sharp Hospital sa…
Harvard Joins MIT With Offering Education Courses on the Web–MITx and EDX With Certification For Free
We have some of this in healthcare too, some funded by the stimulus and this looks to be the way of the future for at least part of a college education. I say part because to do an entire 4 year curriculum online with no other human intervention would be insane, but who knows it might get to that s…
IBM Buys Tealeaf Technologies–Mining Software That Captures Users Activities When Visiting Websites
This is one of those software companies that is mining and tracking you on the website, which I don’t mind but when they turn around and sell my data other than in house use for better intelligence I get concerned with a lot of this software. I was on a site a few months ago and they had some issue…
MedXCom Replaces the After Hours Answering Systems for Doctors That Pushes Patient Profile to the Cell Phone–Works With Medical Records Systems And is a PHR for the Patients…
This sounds pretty cool for the doctor to be able to get a history of surgeries, meds, allergies and so forth before talking to the patient. We live in the information age and this was created by a doctor who of course saw the value of having information rather than playing a guessing game with mem…
FDA Approves New Drug for Treating Genetic Disease Gaucher From Protalix and Pfizer–Will Compete With Genzyme and Help Fill Drug Shortages
The competitor for the drug for the rare genetic disease was purchased by Sanofi last year for a huge amount and they also create drugs that treat other rare diseases. There are only about 2000 patients in the US being treated for the condition. Genzyme Sale to Sanofi-Aventis Finally Going…
Radiology Society of North America Image Share Project Completes Phase One With Allowing Patients To Use and Store Medical Images in the Cloud–PHRs
the program has been funded by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering at the NIH. The next step will allow patients to share images without being uploaded to a PHR. Normally you would want records connected of course connected to your personal health records; howe…
