Waking Up Costs

NIH-Funded Research to Be Free (After One Year)

Clark Venable — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 02:51:01 GMT

I was browsing the Wall Street Journal Health Blog and ran across this item regarding the new federal budget:

"The results of NIH-funded research must be made available for free online one year after they’re published in an academic journal. That’s a big deal, because the NIH is one of the biggest funders of medical research and subscriptions to the academic journals where that research is published can cost thousands of dollars a year.

Some researchers and academic institutions have been pushing for this for years, and the multibillion-dollar journal-publishing industry hired a PR guy known as “the pit bull of public relations” to fight the change."

Your History Can Haunt You

Clark Venable — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 15:14:43 GMT

A cardiologist in San Diego is accused of striking a patient during a heart cath:

Dr. Maurice Buchbinder, a prominent cardiologist, and Scripps Memorial in La Jolla are under federal investigation because he allegedly hit a patient several times during a procedure at the hospital, physicians and health officials have confirmed.

Having been called to the cath lab on several occasions to intubate his patients I can say that this report does not surprise me and is completely consistent with past behavior (though he never struck anyone in my presence). I'm quite sure he refrained from striking me only because of my size and ability to fight back.

Dr. Anna Poe of New Orleans Not To Be Charged

Clark Venable — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 17:06:35 GMT

Grand jury refuses to indict Anna Pou

"Closing one of the most sensational chapters in post-Katrina New Orleans, Dr. Anna Pou said Tuesday that she fell to her knees and thanked God when she learned that a grand jury had refused to charge her with murdering patients in dark, fetid Memorial Medical Center in the nightmarish days after the hurricane struck on Aug. 29, 2005."

Four civil suits are pending so her legal ordeal isn't over yet. As I understand it, the burden of proof in a civil suit requires only that the plaintifs version of the facts is 'more than likely' to be true (ref).

Pennsylvania Doctor Trap Number Two Proposed

Clark Venable — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 10:49:17 GMT

Pennsylvania has chosen an interesting strategy to keep doctors from leaving the state. Rather than fix the current jackpot medical malpractice system they've decided to try to trap doctors that are already here.

The first example of this was something called the MCARE abatement program. The Medical Care Availability and Reduction of Error (MCARE) Act replaced an existing catastrophic coverage fund with a new fund to cover awards which exceeded the primary coverage provided by professional liability policies. Each physician must pay into the fund a percentage of their primary premium to sustain the fund.

The MCARE abatement program (or Health Care Provider Retention Program) provides some financial relief from paying premiums to the fund. How much relief a physician gets depends on the practitioners specialty. And here we come to trap number one. If you accept the abatement, you agree to practice in the state for the year in which you receive the abatement AND the next year. If you leave early, you have to pay back the full amount of the abatement.

The legislature is now working on trap number two--a physician loan forgiveness program. For a period of ten years, for every year a physician practices in Pennsylvania after completing training the state will pay off ten percent of their student loan debt. If they leave early (say, after five years), they have to pay the state back ALL of the money the state paid toward their loans.

At risk: vaccines - The Boston Globe

Clark Venable — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 04:00:00 GMT

The Boston Globe

"Certainly there is plenty of evidence to refute the notion that vaccines cause autism. Fourteen epidemiological studies have shown that the risk of autism is the same whether children received the MMR vaccine or not, and five have shown that thimerosal-containing vaccines also do not cause autism. Further, although large quantities of mercury are clearly toxic to the brain, autism isn't a consequence of mercury poisoning; large, single-source mercury exposures in Minamata Bay and Iraq have caused seizures, mental retardation, and speech delay, but not autism.

Finally, vaccine makers removed thimerosal from vaccines routinely given to young infants about six years ago; if thimerosal were a cause, the incidence of autism should have declined. Instead, the numbers have continued to increase. All of this evidence should have caused a quick dismissal of these cases. But it didn't, and now the courthas turned into a circus. The federal and civil litigation will likely take years to sort out."

[Via PointofLaw.com]