Posts Tagged ‘bloomberg-news’


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  • A Mayo Clinic Outpost Won’t Take Medicare

    Friday, January 1st, 2010 at 07:40 | Comments Off

    About 3,000 Medicare patients who’ve been getting care at a Mayo Clinic facility in Arizona will have to pay out of their own pocket or find another doctor.

    Starting in 2010 (i.e., next week), the five primary care docs at a Mayo outpost in Glendale, Ariz. will stop accepting Medicare. Patients in the program who choose to stick around will be on the hook for about $1,500 per year, Mayo spokesman Michael Yardley told the Health Blog. The clinic expects that ..read more

  • How Much Does a CT Scan Raise the Risk of Cancer?

    Tuesday, December 15th, 2009 at 09:22 | Comments Off

    We’ve been writing for a while now about the risk of cancer associated with CT scans, an issue doctors have begun to pay more attention to as the use of CT scans has soared.

    A few papers published this afternoon in the Archives of Internal Medicine add a bit to the discussion; one estimated that the roughly 72 million CT scans performed in the U.S. in 2007 will ultimately cause some 29,000 cases of cancer.

    A separate study that’s less likely ..read more

  • Extended-Release Antipsychotics, for Extended Patent Protection

    Tuesday, December 15th, 2009 at 06:46 | Comments Off

    The FDA just approved a new, extended-release version of Eli Lilly’s antipsychotic drug Zyprexa. If a classic pharma strategy holds true, the drug may also extend Lilly’s ability to make money from its Zyprexa franchise.

    The company is likely to face generic competition on regular-selling Zyprexa in 2011. But a key patent on the extended release version of the drug is valid until 2018, a Lilly spokeswoman told the Health Blog.

    Regular Zyprexa is taken every day, and is available as a ..read more

  • Dendreon Starts Its Engines; No Green Light Yet from FDA

    Friday, December 11th, 2009 at 00:16 | Comments Off

    Dendreon’s vaccine to treat prostate cancer has already been rejected once by the FDA. But the company recently re-applied for FDA approval, and it’s acting pretty confident while it waits to hear back from the agency.

    Earlier this week, Dendreon said it would sell 15 million new shares of stock and use a chunk of the proceeds to speed up construction of new manufacturing facilities. The sale will increase shares outstanding by at least 13%, Dow Jones Newswires said.

    And today, the ..read more

  • Antipsychotics, Diabetes & Kids

    Saturday, December 5th, 2009 at 09:26 | Comments Off

    The FDA today approved the use of two antipsychotic drugs — Eli Lilly’s Zyprexa and AstraZeneca’s Seroquel — in teenagers. But the agency also said it wants to know more about the risk of weight gain and diabetes in kids who take those and other antipsychotic drugs.

    It’s clear that those risks are broadly associated with this class of drugs, and their warning labels say so. But some evidence suggests the link is especially strong in kids. An FDA advisory panel ..read more

  • Report: Short-Term Pain, Long-Term Gain for Retail Clinics

    Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 at 01:33 | Comments Off

    The business of operating retail health clinics in pharmacies, supermarkets and big-box discount stores has gone through fits and starts in the last couple of years, as we have recounted here, here and here.

    Today, a new report from the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions says more challenges await, “including labor shortages, compensation inflation, price pressures from new entrants and regulatory pressures from state governments — all of which may slow growth or impede retail clinics from opening.”

    But none of ..read more

  • Antipsychotic Drugs, Elderly Patients and Omnicare’s Settlement

    Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 02:02 | Comments Off

    So Omnicare, a big pharmacy that specializes in providing drugs to nursing-home patients, will pay $98 million to settle allegations that the company “solicited or paid a variety of kickbacks,” according to this statement from the feds.

    The WSJ story gets into all the details, but one wrinkle in particular caught our eye: Omnicare was accused of soliciting and receiving kickbacks from J&J in exchange for recommending the company’s antipsychotic drug Risperdal.

    This touches on the broader issue of the widespread use ..read more

  • Why Do Antipsychotic Meds Cause Weight Gain in Kids?

    Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 at 08:11 | Comments Off

    Kids taking the latest generation of antipsychotic meds gain significant amounts of weight–as much as 19 pounds on average in just 11 weeks for kids taking Zyprexa, according to a study published today in JAMA. Abilify, Risperdal and Seroquel were all linked to weight gain as well. Here’s the WSJ story.

    In fact, every one of the more than 200 children and adolescents who took the medicines in the study added weight, Christoph Correll, a psychiatrist who was one of the ..read more

  • Getting an Advance Look at the Doctor’s Bill

    Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 at 05:38 | Comments Off

    Comparison shoppers nationwide soon will be able to dig into a new mountain of patient-care cost numbers from the health insurance industry, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said today.

    A new database and Web site are being financed with nearly $100 million in settlement money that Cuomo is collecting from health insurers — he negotiated a bunch of big settlements based on the way companies calculated payments for visits to out-of-network doctors and hospitals. Cuomo said industry data was skewed ..read more

  • Sanofi CEO Still Shopping, But Big Merger Is ‘Highly Unlikely’

    Wednesday, September 30th, 2009 at 22:59 | Comments Off

    Sanofi-Aventis has spent some $9 billion on acquisitions this year, but there’s “more shopping on the horizon,” CEO Chris Viehbacher tells Bloomberg News.

    Among other things, Viehbacher is interested in deals that would expand Sanofi’s vaccine business — a popular trend among big pharma companies (including Merck, Abbott and J&J) these days.

    The market for vaccines is expected to double in the next five years, and they’re tough for would-be competitors to manufacture, Viehbacher told Bloomberg. The company may also use acquisitions ..read more