Advocacy group releases mental health media guide
The second edition of a media guide for reporting on suicide and mental illness, prepared by Wisconsin United for Mental Health, is now available. The guide, “Open Minds Open Doors: A guide for Media,” provides statistics, facts and background data as well as suggested terminology and guidelines for avoiding the stigma of suicide and mental illness. The guide recently won a Mental Health America 2009 Media Award in the advocacy category.
According to Wisconsin United for Mental Health’s Web site, its mission is to “educate and increase awareness about mental illnesses, to eliminate stigma and discrimination, and promote recovery.”
First Amendment defense fails InterMune exec
If any company thinks a press release is protected speech under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and, therefore, can’t be used by the government when bringing criminal charges, well, they can forget about it.
That’s what W. Scott Harkonen, a former chief executive at InterMune, is learning this month, thanks to a federal court ruling that decided a press release can be used by the U.S. Department of Justice to press a criminal indictment; in this case, the charges are wire fraud and misbranding of a medication under the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act.
The backdrop: InterMune marketed a drug called Actimmune to treat chronic granulomatous disease and severe, malignant osteoporosis. In 2000, the company began studying the drug for combating idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), a fatal lung disease, but the study didn’t show effectiveness. In a 2002 meeting with FDA staffers, InterMune was told a subgroup analysis suggesting a survival trend for some patients was insufficient for approval.
Nonetheless, InterMune began promoting the drug to treat IPF and, in 2002, issued a press release announcing the results of its clinical trial and the headline boasted the drug demonstrated a survival benefit and reduced mortality in people with mild to moderate effects of the disease. Harkonen wrote the headline and byline, and controlled the content of the entire press release, according to the ruling. InterMune also hired a marketing firm to determine whether the press release would affect prescribing behavior of pulmonologists; a survey indicated it would.
But it looks like Harkonen’s words will come back to haunt him. U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel refused to dismiss the indictment, writing: “It is undisputed that the government has the right to regulate false and misleading statements made to doctors and patients about drug products in interstate commerce. Accepting the indictment’s allegations as true for the purposes of this motion, it is clear to the court that the speech at issue is not outside the bounds of the FDCA’s regulatory reach as being wholly protected by the First Amendment as a matter of law.”
Hat tip to FDA Law.
Tough talk and rough road for health reform
Filed under: Health care reform, Hot Health Headline
Speechmaking has given way to lawmaking. Now that the complex task of making health reform real is under way, it’s shaping up as a pretty tough slog.
The Senate Health Committee began its public deliberations over a draft bill with some testy sparring between Republicans and Democrats. Pick your winner in the soundbite battle over the legislation.
In the Republican corner, Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire: “I don’t know who wrote it, but if it had been Rube Goldberg, Ira Magaziner, and Karl Marx you might have gotten this product.”
Counterpunching for the Democrats, Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland: “Our current system is a combination of Adam Smith, Darth Vader, and ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ .”
A sobering financial challenge lies behind the sniping – cost estimates have ballooned to $1.6 trillion. Democrats “privately acknowledged” to the Washington Post that finding a way to pay for an expansion of health coverage without blowing up the federal budget “is proving excruciatingly difficult.”
Indeed, the powerful Senate Finance Committee postponed the release of its draft amid worries about cost and a push for at least a little bipartisan support. “We’re not there yet,” said Chairman Max Baucus (D.-Mont.), The Wall Street Journal reported.
Shriners may shutter six hospitals
John Barry of the St. Petersburg Times reports that declining membership and a weak economy are conspiring to force cutbacks at Shriners Hospitals for Children, which offer free pediatric care in 22 cities.
Under one proposal, six underutilized hospitals would be closed outright (see CNN’s map here). Shriners also are considering heavy cutbacks across the board, unsustainable withdrawals from the hospitals’ endowment fund, or allowing member hospitals – none of which even have billing offices now – to accept funds from Medicaid and insurance.
The hospitals’ future will be decided at the Shriners’ Imperial Council Session, July 6-8, when about 1,400 Shiners are expected to gather in San Antonio, Texas.
(Hat tip to Al Tompkins at Poynter Institute)
In speech, Gawande asks new MDs to cut costs
Filed under: Health care reform, Hot Health Headline
In the wake of his much-discussed New Yorker piece about health care costs, Dr. Atul Gawande spoke to graduates of the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine about their role in lowering the national cost of health care.
After Gawande explained the situation through analogy and observation, he called for further research into the “positive deviants,” the cities and institutions offering the best care for the lowest cost. He gave examples of methods to avoid the unnecessary treatment he blames for high health care costs and finished by urging graduates to enter the workforce and fight for the soul of American medicine.
Key legislators cozy with health industry
Filed under: Conflicts of interest, Health care reform, Hot Health Headline
Reporters Larry Margasak and Sharon Theimer of the Associated Press explored close ties between senators poised to make key decisions on health care and the industry they are looking to reform.
Representatives or their family members serve on industry boards, receive industry stock options and hold health care stock. Paul Kane of the Washington Post found that, together, 30 lawmakers owned $11 million in such stock.
From the AP report:
Members of both parties have industry connections, including Democrats Jay Rockefeller and Tom Harkin, in addition to [Chris] Dodd, and Republicans Tom Coburn, Judd Gregg, John Kyl and Orrin Hatch, financial reports showed Friday.
VA hospitals faulted for lax infection control
The Veterans Affairs health system may be a model for electronic medical records and savvy drug purchasing, but all bets are off when it comes to the disinfection of equipment for colonoscopies.
After reports of problems piled up, the VA inspector general did some surprise inspections at the government-run hospitals and found they weren’t doing a good enough job sterilizing endoscopes. Yesterday, congressmen blasted the VA for not fixing the problems even after it became aware of them.
“The failure of medical facilities to comply on such a large scale with repeated alerts and
directives suggests fundamental defects in organizational structure,” said the report by the VA OIG. Inadequate cleaning of the equipment may have exposed more than 10,000 vets to hepatitis B, hepatitis C or HIV.
In all, more than 40 facilities got the once-over by investigators, including three which have been “the subject of considerable media attention.” Those are the Bruce W. Carter VAMC in Miami, the Tennessee Valley Healthcare System-Murfreesboro campus, and the Charlie Norwood VA Medical Center in Augusta, Ga.
The Tennessean has a handy chronology of the colonoscopy controversy and a recent story with reactions from affected patients. “There’s nothing they can say,” said Thomas Mayo, a 58-year-old Vietnam vet who learned in February that he has hepatitis C. “They’ve given me something that may kill me.”
For more, see testimony by the VA in this Associated Press video.
Med school conflict of interest policies rated
Filed under: Hot Health Headline, Pharmaceuticals, Studies, Tools
The American Medical Student Association released a 2009 version of their PharmFreeScorecard, evaluating 149 U.S. medical schools based on their stated conflict-of-interest policies. According to the executive summary, 21 percent of schools improved their policies in the last year, with 16 more schools scoring an A or B in 2009.
AMSA rates policies in fields such as scholarships, continuing medical education, purchasing, gifts and samples, curriculum, consulting, speaking and disclosure and combines them to determine a school’s overall grade. The association handed out 9 As, 36 Bs, 18 Cs, 17 Ds and 35Fs, with 27 schools still pending or otherwise in the process of changing their regulations.
Documentary exposes hospital billing practices
Do No Harm, a documentary that focuses on questionable billing practices at a nonprofit hospital in Georgia, premiered last month and will soon be screened in several more cities around the country. Its subjects aim to bring national attention to what they see as “corrupt” hospital billing strategies.
The film, directed by Rebecca Schanberg and supported by Chicago nonprofit the Kindling Group, follows two whistleblowers who uncovered a tax-exempt hospital’s aggressive billing practices toward the uninsured. Their actions prompted dozens of class action lawsuits filed on behalf of uninsured patients across the country. AHCJ member Andy Miller makes a cameo appearance in the documentary and was spotted in the audience at the Chicago premier.
There, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan called the documentary “stranger than fiction,” Alex Parker reported in the Chi Town Daily News. Madigan was quick to draw parallels to her own state.
“In the absence of laws to protect health care consumers from overly aggressive billing and collection practices, many Illinois hospitals employed strategies similar to those at Phoebe Putney,” said Madigan, a leader in the state’s efforts to curb expensive billing practices.
CDC refuses to hand over 4,000 pages to paper
Filed under: Health journalism, Hot Health Headline, Public records
In January, 2007, AHCJ member and Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Alison Young asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 4,000 pages of documents, all discussing the threats to the agency’s reputation posed by her work and that of her co-workers.
Photo by Marcin Wichary via Flickr
The CDC says it takes an average of 38 days to process Freedom of Information Act requests, yet the Atlanta paper has several requests still pending after a year or two. In a recent column, Young takes the tardy agency to task, citing President Obama’s request for openness.
In the AJC’s case, the CDC said it fears publishing the records “would interfere with the agency’s deliberative process and have a chilling effect on employee discussions.” The records are being withheld under an FOIA exemption for internal documents that are part of the agency’s deliberative process.
-
Awards for Excellence in Health Care JournalismDeadline: Feb. 3
- How I did it: Falsified charts in nursing homes linked to patient care
- Access Denied: Looking at a lack of health care availability
- Transparency & medical errors: Public reporting of patient harm is a potent force
- Focus on freelancing: Tips for buying liability insurance
- Why do some patients get stuck in hospitals for weeks, months?
- Investigate health professionals and the boards that regulate them
- Presidents of AHCJ, SPJ call for more openness from Obama administration
