Drugs/Medical Archive

Elective Surgery Risks Include Wallet Suction

December 8th, 2010. By Hunter West

Medical credit cards… 

Charge it…but more than the fat may be missing post-op

Have you heard about these things? 

They’re designed for those elective procedures not covered by health insurance or Medicaid. It might even be a procedure you don’t even really need, such as laser eye surgery, or cosmetic dentistry. A facelift. 

You may not have the money for it. And you may not have the room on your existing credit cards. But now you can apply for a medical credit card issued by a number of providers with the express use of funding medical procedures. 

But buyer beware… 

As a recent article in The New York Times points out, medical credit cards can dig you into an even deeper financial hole if you’re not careful. The other problem, according to the November 26^th issue of Patient Money in The New York Times, is that such cards have been designed, Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Elective Surgery, Medical Credit Card
Posted in Drugs/Medical | No Comments »

Did your DePuy Hip Surgeon Receive Compensation from DePuy?

December 7th, 2010. By AbiK

I came across an interesting article yesterday over at Connecticut Health I-Team (C-HIT), a non-profit publication focusing on health and safety issues. The article was about the DePuy ASR Hip replacement, and the hip recall—and sure, there’s been an onslaught of news about DePuy, but this article was one of the few I’ve seen that actually published the list of surgeons who’ve received compensation from DePuy Orthopaedics. The list includes around 200 surgeons nationwide who received a total of over $80.8 million.

To be fair, the list is available over at the DePuy company website—but you have to work for it a bit. It’s not only down at the bottom navigation on the homepage in grey mice type (translation: not exactly the mose legible), but it’s also arranged as an alphabetical click-through by the doctor’s last name. I didn’t see an actual downloadable file of the complete list—and that’s where C-HIT comes in—they did that legwork.

Now, I’m not saying that any of those surgeons necessarily chose to use the DePuy ASR Hip in patients when perhaps a better hip implant would’ve been a more prudent choice. What I am saying though is that the practice of pharmaceutical companies compensating doctors—for consulting, speaking gigs or whatever—does begin to put into question just how independently or free-from-influence a doctor can truly be when making decisions regarding patient care—when he’s been compensated by the very companies that provide the menu of treatment options available to him, and therefore, his patients?

So, for those of you who are curious, this is the list that was published by C-HIT, by state. Click to read on… Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: DePuy ASR Hip, DePuy Hip Recall, DePuy Orthopaedics Metal Hip Replacement, DePuy Surgeon
Posted in Drugs/Medical | 10 Comments »

Counting Your Blessings, Counting Your Pills

November 25th, 2010. By Hunter West

Can we talk?

Today is Thanksgiving—a time to count your blessings, in spite of an economic climate that may have left us with fewer blessings overall to count. And tomorrow may be a blacker Black Friday than normal, because we may not have the financial wherewithal to hit the stores and take advantage of all the deals. 

Be that as it may, on this day we count our blessings nonetheless—in between counting the various pills designed to keep us comfortable, to keep us alive. 

And to keep the drug companies not only in business, but thriving. 

Here’s the question… 

Do we really need to take all these drugs we are using? Have we become soft? Always looking towards the path of least resistance? 

We all learned from a young age that shortcuts often get us into trouble. “Do it right, do it once, measure it twice, cut it once, take no short-cuts,” Daddy always told us. 

You can’t take a short cut to a university education. Some do—by applying for those spiffy, legitimate-looking online diplomas that are worth nothing more than the paper they’re printed on. Taking a short cut to the corner office at work often means stabbing others in the back, or worse… 

My point is, you can’t take a short cut to your health. A person can’t expect to exude health by eating crap, drinking excessively and sitting on the couch all day (Thanksgiving aside, of course…). 

You can’t lose weight and keep it off without changing your lifestyle and getting regular exercise. 

You can’t put your faith in a pill and trust it will fix everything—particularly when the likes of Meridia, Avandia or Paxil are what’s in the pill bottle. 

But that’s what appears to be happening… 

There are pills for everything. Having to get up to pee in the night. Having heartburn. Having Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Drugs
Posted in Drugs/Medical | 2 Comments »

Post-Op News You Don’t Want: Oops! Hospital Errors Still Happening

November 17th, 2010. By LucyC

Stories about hospital screw-ups and medical malpractice suits—you know, mistakes that nearly cost someone his life—are typically good coffee break fodder and undoubtedly the stuff of urban legend. However, I came across this news story today and it was a bit of a wake-up call. According to a report by United Press International, 12 California hospitals were recently fined between $25,000 and $75,000 each “for medical errors that caused, or were likely to cause, injury or death.” Twelve hospitals. 

One of the facilities that screwed up and got caught, according to officials with California’s Department of Public Health, is Southwest Healthcare System in Murrieta, CA. They were fined $25,000 for leaving a surgical instrument—”a metal device roughly 10 inches long and 2 inches wide used to hold tissue during surgery—inside a woman who had a baby in 2008.” I’m going to assume that that means the surgical team left the device inside the woman following her Caesarean section. Nobody noticed until the woman complained of pain. So she underwent exploratory surgery and the instrument was found. Apparently the report that was written about the incident listed one of the possible reasons for the mistake as unfamiliarity between the two doctors who were operating—meaning the docs didn’t know each other. Isn’t that why procedures were developed?

Again, to cite the UPI story, this particular facility has been fined by the state seven times. And, Southwest Healthcare System is not alone in its stunning lack of adherence to procedure: California Pacific Medical Center, Pacific Campus Hospital, San Francisco, was fined $50,000 and $75,000 for negligence involving two different patients; Citrus Valley Medical Center in Covina, Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Hospital Error, medical malpractice, Veterans Hospital, veterans medical malpractice
Posted in Drugs/Medical | No Comments »

The Meridia Conspiracy Theory?

November 5th, 2010. By janem

If I were a conspiracy theorist, I’d say the FDA and Abbott Labs, the maker of Meridia, are in cahoots together. If that were the case, it would explain away the reason why the FDA approved the diet-suppressant drug soon after it declared Fen-Phen—an older cousin—unsafe, back in 1997. It would also explain how Abbott was able to market Meridia just two months after Fen-Phen was taken off the market.

Stay with me here… imagine the FDA getting kickbacks from drug companies for keeping their dangerous drugs on the market (Meridia lived for 14 years and that rings cha-ching). I’ll go out on a limb and take this one step further: Fen-Phen was typically taken by obese people for weight loss, and obese people often wind up with diabetes. Still here? Good. Diabetes is the biggest economic drain on the health system so wouldn’t it be easier just to kill obese people via heart attacks and strokes with drugs like Meridia and Fen-Phen before they become diabetic and a drain to the economy?

Here are the facts on diabetes: The American Journal of Public Health said that diabetes is a monumental drain on US Resources. The US has the largest number of diabetics (16 million) of all the developed countries and people with diabetes were responsible for 23 percent of US hospitals’ expenses in treating all conditions in 2008.

Although diabetes sufferers compose 8 percent of the US population, by 2008 they were responsible for 20 percent of US hospitalizations. It gets worse: those diabetes patients stayed longer in the hospital—5.3 days on average, as compared to 4.4 days for people without diabetes—and cost more—$10,937 on average, compared to $8,746. And we all know that when it comes to hospitalization, well, there’s no would-be money in that for the FDA–the money would be in prescription drugs.

OK, I’m getting carried away with the conspiracy theory. And in truth, if there were a conspiracy, hey, diabetics would surely be a necessary gravy train for potential kick-backs to the FDA—one need only look to the FDA’s handling of Avandia.

But really, what planet are you living on if you think that Meridia is safe? Or that it even works? Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Meridia
Posted in Drugs/Medical, Emerging Issues | 2 Comments »