Teva and Ranbaxy Agreement Announced for the Sale of Generic Lipitor

With the huge sales of Lipitor Pfizer has had over the years, this has to be one of the hottest generics around today as Teva will profit from a portion of the sales.  Pfizer in the meantime said the would sell name brand Lipitor at the generic prices.  Earlier this month, Teva announced laying off over 100 employees in the US and the UK after acquiring Cephalon.  Teva Laying Off Over 1000 Employees in the US and UK After Cephalon Acquisition JERUSALEM--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (Nasdaq: TEVA) announced today that pursuant to an agreement between its subsidiary, Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Inc....

FINRA Sanctions Firms for Selling Interests in Troubled Companies, One in the OC, Capital Holdings Financed IHHI–Chain of 8 Hospitals in the OC–Guns, Porn You Name It All Here

This is a healthcare soap opera if you have ever heard one.  I guess living here I’m probably a little closer to this and have friends who work for IHHI and it is a mess and a Ponzi scheme.  Here we go back to 2009 where Capital Holdings was closed and the hospitals didn’t know if they were going to stay afloat or not.  There’ still no final word from the SEC so I guess a good thing here that FINRA stepped.  Medical Capital Holdings Closed by Federal Judge – IHHI Hospitals Waiting Outcome They had to take bids on the mortgage… IHHI Hospital Bids Continue for the Mortgage –Prem Reddy at 57M and Kali Chaudhuri at 55M But...

Publish Ethics Committee Decisions - Part 2

Tarris Rosell over at Practical Bioethics has some good comments on my still underdeveloped proposal to publish ethics committee opinions.   First, there certainly already is publication of ethics committee cases.  The deliberation and outcome of cases are regularly recounted and described in bioethics and medical journal articles.  So, I admit it is not as though we have zero insight into the functioning of ethics committee recommendation / decision making.  Still, my proposal would significantly expand the "database" of available cases. Second, Tarris is correct that most committees do not really much engage in case consultation (though perhaps much more retrospective than prospective).  That is handled at the individual or small...

New Model Proxy Advance Directive Form and Guide

The ABA Commission on Law and Aging has released a new free booklet offering a simple durable power of attorney for health care, designed to meet the legal requirements in nearly all states. Giving Someone a Power of Attorney for Your Health Care: A Guide with an Easy-to-Use Legal Form for All Adults can be described as “bare bones” because it doesn’t provide specific instructions about medical treatments, as most standardized health care advance directive forms do. Instead, it provides solely for the appointment of a health care agent with broad health-care decision-making authority.   A premise of the publication is that the guidance one gives an agent more effectively comes from having focused conversations with the agent and loved ones over time. There are a growing...

Rasouli v. Sunnybrook -- in Globe & Mail

The Globe and Mail is continuing its awesome series on end-of-life healthcare.  Today, one of the articles summarizes the Rasouli case pending before the Supreme Court of Canada. The article observes: "If the court declines to hear the appeal, there will be no national guidance when families fight with physicians in hospitals and courtrooms over end-of-life issues."  Attorney Mark Handelman is quoted in the article: “As a country, we need to have these debates. But how are we going to do that when nobody wants to talk about it?”  Doug White and I expand on just this sort of argument in a piece forthcoming in JA...

Former FDA Chief Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach Appointed to the Board of Directors For BioTime and OncoCyte

In the last couple of years the former FDA Commish has also landed a couple of other board positions as well which I hope will keep him out of Gingrich’s think tank which is maybe where one may not want to be today.  Former FDA leader von Eschenbach Named to Viamet Board of Directors Former FDA Commissioner, Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach Finds a Home on the Board of HistoSonics This of course comes at a time when Geron and Biotime are going to focus on oncology and have discontinued their stem cell research a few weeks ago as the money from investors with biotech are just not there.  BD  Geron To Focus on Cancer Programs Discontinues...

Watson Pharma Gets FDA Approval for Generic Version of Contraceptive Yaz–A Drug That Has Suffered Recalls & Other Issues

Back in the middle of 2010 we had the somewhat hidden recall from the FDA of YAZ as they were out of spec.  Hopefully this won’t happen again with the generic version, but this indicates to me this is one to keep an eye on.  The Unknown FDA Recall of Bayer's Yaz Contraceptive Pills (And Some Prempro Too) There’s yet one more version with vitamin enhancements too.  FDA Approves Contraceptive Beyaz-Estrogen/Progesterone Pill That Adds Folate (B-Vitamin) PARSIPPANY, N.J., Nov. 29, 2011 -- /PRNewswire/ -- Watson Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NYSE: WPI) today announced that its subsidiary, Watson Laboratories, Inc., has received...

Report on Jobs Program With Measures to Create Livelihoods–Fix the Math and Create Algorithms to Move Money and Re-Focus on Better Health Versus Risk Assessments

This is a nice detailed report and says a lot of what I say and again the focus on fixing the math and the algorithms.  Today Harvard put out a study that said there’s a big tendency for the creative to be deceptive and basically for lack of a better choice of words, they cheat with mathematical formulas or structure them only for profit with a neglect for ethics.  I have had my series going here about the “Attack of the Killer Algorithms” and you should read it for some new viewpoints as you may be naïve and gullible and if nothing else it will wake you up to how many decisions servers running 24/7 are making today.  It’s not...

Palliative Care - Three Awesome Benefits

Last month, the Albany, NY Times Union newspaper reported on a palliative care conference sponsored jointly by the Healthcare Association of New York State and the Hospice and Palliative Care Association of New York State.  Many patients, given the choice, will opt out of expensive care that may have only a marginal chance of success.   At least three significant benefits were identified.Studies have shown that palliative care patients report a higher quality of life and may even live longer.Palliative care has been shown to improve patient satisfaction and readmission rates -- two measurements for which the federal government has created financial incentives for hospitals.Palliative care saves hospitals "a ton of money."  A palliative...

FDA Compliance Seminar on Access Data Base Validation in Drug Discovery

This was worth nothing and the seminar is coming up in January.  Good old Access still the work horse of a lot of data base work.  Actually sometimes with SQL server you may find some front end Access Data Bases combined with SQL to do the work that you can’t program in SQL, they are still out there.  This seminar is about how to satisfy the FDA requirements in the discipline of Drug Discovery and will go over common technical issues with using Access and how to resolve with submitting data to the FDA.  I am guessing this relates to data on the web that is submitted.  Anyway this was worth the mention here for those...

Toilet Paper Fraud–Elderly Customers Were Sold More Than 70 Years Worth of Toilet Paper Formulated for Septic Tanks To Pass Federal Inspections

This is about as low as it gets!  I can see today how this happened as sometimes even writing this blog, I feel like I am writing Sci-Fi at times.  What is bad is when you read through here and the company put the folks who were suckered in on an “official idiot list”.  Three sales representatives for FBK Products LLC now face prison time.  They had this one going with “laws that regulate toilet paper” and septic tanks required this and that the tanks would not meet federal inspection standards, ok so when’s the last time an official from the government come out to inspect?  They don’t but sad that these folks got away...

ER Building Boom By Hospitals in Some Parts of the US Taking Place–Cash Cows for Hospitals to Lure Insured Patients in Affluent Areas–Bigger Exposure to Re-Admissions

Just when you think you have heard it all, we now have free-standing ER facilities being built and this story focuses on an area in Washington state, right outside of where some of the biggest tech companies operate with some of the best employee health insurance benefits.  Is this wrong, you tell me.  It’s really not a new concept as there have been other hospital chains that have done the same but perhaps now it’s becoming a bit more visible.  In California we have had Prime Healthcare doing this in a similar fashion for a number of years with buying up hospitals that are on their last financial legs and would more than likely...

Primer on Critical Care - in the Globe & Mail

The Globe & Mail has a new series of articles, videos, and interactive media explaining the nature and challenges of critical care.  The reporters had been based in Sunnybrook ICU for two mont...

FDA Approves Middle of the Night Sleeping Pill–Treatments Are Getting Specific–Is This Personalized Medicine?

Ok so a little humor as you are only supposed to have this sleeping aid if you already have some sleep under your belt.  It’s a lower dose so that one does not get up and take another full dose is what I get from this one. The middle of the night is kind of funny actually as it’s just a lower dose pill, what they not stop at to market!  I would think one could take a lower dose if their issues I sleeping were not as drastic, right?  Also the way the article reads it assumes that you have already taken one full strength pill so this is safer than a double dose.  I’m not a bit sleeping pill person and have taken a few in my...

Merck In Germany Fighting Merck in the US Over Facebook Page–German Merck Files Lawsuit & Wants Their Page Back- How Good Is That Privacy Over There..

German Merck and US Merck are two different companies and were separated years ago.  Can one not start another Facebook page?  It’s not like these pages are “gold” for goodness sakes and there’s out opportunities, i.e. like the official company websites which where I would go anyway if needing any information as I spend no time on any business Facebook pages and turned my own page off a while back.  Did the US Merck hack it:)  Funny that Facebook seems to care less for the most part other than checking to see if anything was hacked.  This would be funny with Merck hacking Merck.  BD  FRANKFURT—German...

High Frequency Trading Firm Fined $850k for Losing Control of an Algorithm in Rapid Succession Buying–Bad Math and Some Killer Algos At Work- Keep Occupying…

Ok, get this, the algorithm had only been created the night before and only had one or two hours of testing…hmmm…how about those algos in healthcare?  It does make you stop and think as we don’t have the “speed” issues as much but there are big influxes of data tables being searched today.  There’s more of this going on than most of us are aware of, only the ones who get caught.  This is part of the Occupy movement and why I said “Occupy Algorithms” as you can see what’s moving the money, the math.  “Occupy Algorithms”–”The Attack of the Killer Algorithms Part 5” - Nothing Will Improve Until Audits and Actions Takes Place...

Parmar v. VS Hospital - Life Support Removed over Nonpayment

In October, 23-year-old Narmada Parmar arrived at VS Hospital nine months pregnant with epileptic fits.  The baby was delivered stillborn.  Ms. Parmar has been dependent on a ventilator ever since.    This Tuesday evening, the resident doctors approached the patient's husband, Hasmukh, and asked him to pay the outstanding hospital bill of Rs 35,000 or else they would remove the ventilator.  The patient had a "Mamta card" issued to women from economically weaker sections.  But it covers only basic care and not the cost of using the ventilator.  The husband was unable to pay the bill.  The...

New Survey Indicates Frequency, Reasons for Medical Futility Disputes

Earlier this month, the Regence Foundation polled 500 board-certified physicians on behalf of National Journal.  The results of the "Living Well at the End of Life Poll" are available here.  Questions 26 and 27 are particularly relevant to medical futility. 26.  From your experience, how often do patients and their families reject your recommendation to discontinue curative treatment in favor of palliative care?66% Regularly / Occasionally34% Infrequently / Never 27. What reasons have patients and their families given for rejecting your recommendation to discontinue curative treatment in favor of palliative care?75% Unwillingness to accept that curative treatment was ineffective74% Disagreement from family members about discontinuing curative...

Engage with Grace

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National Healthcare Decisions Day "Speak Up" Video

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“Occupy Algorithms”–”The Attack of the Killer Algorithms Part 5” - Nothing Will Improve Until Audits and Actions Takes Place To Correct Formulas Built for Profit Only by Corporations And We Battle Back With Math

This is kind of a summary statement of what I have been saying for the last number of years.  The Occupy movement basically reinforces this with the frustrations, loss of jobs and market that focuses only on financial gain with a serious loss of ethics.  The Occupy movement represents this for all of us in the 99% group.  You keep reading that the 1% keep getting richer and they are.  They have the “math” and algorithms on their side 100% that allows this to occur. I guess through all of this we can really tell who doesn’t like math and formulas but it is what it is…it’s what was built and by living in the past and not coming...