A.M. Vitals: White House Halts ‘Mystery Shopper’ Plan
No Mystery:
The Obama administration halted plans to have mystery shoppers posing as patients cold-call doctors offices to see how difficult it was to get appointments, the New York Times reports. The White House had said it wanted to measure access to primary-care doctors before the health-care overhaul adds more than 30 million people to the ranks of insured patients. But doctors and politicians had criticized the plan as a wasteful breach of trust.
Nondisclosure: A new study says surgeons who conducted clinical trials to test a Medtronic Inc. bone-growth protein used in spine surgery didnt report serious complications that arose in those trials, The Wall Street Journal reports. According to a Journal analysis, 15 of those surgeons have collectively received at least $62 million from the medical-device giant for unrelated work.Medtronic said the study raised questions about researchers conclusions in their published literature, but it didnt tarnish the credibility of data the company submitted to FDA.
Hospital Deal:Health insurer Highmark Inc. reached an agreement to acquire the struggling West Penn Allegheny Health System, in an ambitious example of the effort to forge more integrated, efficient health-care organizations, the WSJ reports. In the tentative deal, Highmark will pump as much as $475 million into the hospital system, which has been operating in the red.The newly combined Highmark-West Penn will face off against the giant University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
Avastin Debated: Breast-cancer patients who say Roche Holding AGs Avastin saved their lives opened an appeals hearing on the drug Tuesday, calling on the Food and Drug Administration to let the miracle medicine keep its approval, the WSJ reports. But FDA, which has voiced concerns about whether the drug works on breast cancer, emphasized the drugs risks.
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- Health Highlights: July 12, 2011
