Registries for Breast Implants?
I’m sorry I couldn’t attend the Food and Drug Administration advisory committee meeting the past two days that learned the two manufacturers of silicone gel breast implants — Allergan and…
Extending the Frontiers: Working Despite Alzheimer’s and Campus Smoking Bans
When I was growing up in the 1970s I complained to my mother that I didn’t like cigarette smoke. She told me to get used to it because the major…
Physicians Oppose Increased Certification Requirements
In the past, obtaining board certification in a medical specialty was straightforward. One completed a residency, studied, took and passed a test, and was deemed “board certified”. Later, certificates required…
Has the iPad Replaced the Stethoscope?
'Thirty years ago, we depended on 2,000-page texts such as Robbins Basic Pathology and Gray’s Anatomy. We lugged these around and juggled them as we did our anatomical dissections.'…
Tablets in Healthcare
The July/August issue of Government Health IT had an article about tablets making their way into healthcare workplaces and it suggests that we respond by harnessing these assets - cautiously. The…
Social Network for Patients, Doctors and Caregivers
This is different in the fact that a social network is going through a “clinical trial” to see if the extended care and offerings helps reduce re-admission to the hospital. …
Spine Surgery Largely Unfazed by Recent Market Challenges
Few medical device markets have demonstrated the kind of staying power — prices, procedure growth, market growth — shown by spine surgical technologies. The swelling caseload of new patients, the…
CMS Depression Screening
A new Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) proposal would screen more Medicare beneficiaries for depression, according to a recent memo. A new Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)…
Strange Coincidence: When Cancer Strikes Hospital CEO
I am just back from the Phoenix-metro area. It’s now the 5th largest in the United States and despite home foreclosures, there is still a feeling of growth in many…
A High Price for Rare Cancer Drugs
Pfizer last week won Food and Drug Administration “accelerated approval” for Xalkori (crizotinib) for a rare form of metastatic lung cancer that strikes about 3 percent of people — almost…
