When you are in the throes of an emergency medical condition such as a heart attack or a stroke, you want an ambulance to arrive quickly, and take you to the nearest hospital for treatment. Thanks to the quietly-kept practice of ambulance diversion, you may not get the help you need in time. Ambulance diversion seeks to manage the overcrowding of emergency departments by redirecting emergencies to another hospital. Health Data.gov explains that [...]
When there is a complication in childbirth that leads to a birth injury for the baby, there is often intense scrutiny about the baby's health and well-being – as there should be. The birth trauma that some women experience, however, after a difficult childbirth is real, and often left unaddressed. Last summer, we covered the USA Today investigative report which revealed that hospitals know how to protect mothers who are giving birth, but [...]
Rideshare companies Uber and Lyft provide transportation services to airports, from restaurants, and to places throughout the state. Now, they’re trying to help people make it to their doctors’ appointments. Both companies have ventured into the non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT) space with Uber Health and Lyft Concierge. For patients who are house-bound without transportation, or for those not well enough to drive themselves to medical appointments, Uber and Lyft – in conjunction with [...]
Thanks to a new law that went into effect on January 1, 2019, hospitals are now required to publish the prices of their procedures. The hospital's price list must be made public, published online and updated each year, according to a story in Newsweek. The new law also applies to rehabilitation facilities, psychiatric hospitals and critical access hospitals. This new law intends to increase pricing transparency, helping patients to become more knowledgeable, make [...]
Preventing veterans from committing suicide was named the "highest clinical priority" by the Veterans Administration, yet VA officials still failed to spend the $17.7 million in the suicide prevention budget for fiscal year 2018, according to a story in Time Magazine. A report published in November 2018 by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the Veterans Health Administration’s (VHA) "suicide prevention media outreach activities declined in recent years due to leadership [...]
Imagine discovering that severe respiratory distress was a side effect of a small device implanted in the top of the spine to relieve pain. After Kathleen Yaremchuk, an ENT (ear, nose and throat) doctor had to perform an emergency tracheotomy on one patient with the implant to save her life, she and her colleagues reviewed the records of 260 patients implanted with the device at Henry Ford Hospital, and found that a significant [...]
Breast cancer is an insidious disease. According to the American Cancer Society, almost 41,000 women will die this year from breast cancer. Many women will opt to undergo chemotherapy and radiation. Chemo, though an effective tool, can cause long-term damage to your organs, your bone marrow, and your nervous system, so some women may choose to forgo that option altogether, and have their breasts removed surgically. For older patients, like those in nursing [...]
(This is part of a series, presented by McGowan, Hood & Felder, LLC, titled “Life on The Bleeding Edge: How the FDA Won’t Keep You Safe.” To learn more, please read Part One, Part Two, and Part Three.) In July 2018, the medical device and pharmaceutical manufacturer Bayer released a statement that they would pull the Essure® System for Permanent Birth Control out of American markets after December 31, 2018. The company claimed [...]
More than 3,000 patients of an ambulatory surgical center in New Jersey received letters, warning that they may have been exposed to bloodborne pathogens if they had a procedure at the HealthPlus Surgery Center between January and September of 2018. Upon investigation, the NJ Department of Health found that staff at the facility were not properly sterilizing medical instruments, which could expose patients to bloodborne diseases such as hepatitis B, hepatitis C and [...]
In late December of 2018, federal prosecutors announced that Michael Babich, former CEO of Insys Therapeutics, agreed to plead guilty to participating in a bribery scheme which gave kickbacks to doctors in exchange for prescribing a powerful opioid painkiller. Babich, who resigned his role as CEO of the Arizona-based drug manufacturing firm, was scheduled to face trial next month; he has agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy and mail fraud charges, according to [...]
