1. New visions for fixing health care – Simplifying a complex process
(CNN profiled six health care entrepreneurs including Renaissance Health.) As a young internist working his way through rounds nearly a decade ago, Pranav Kothari grappled with what he saw as a broken delivery system. "When someone has a rash or strep throat, we do a pretty good job, the system works," he says. "But we tend to under serve those who need it most - those who are sick with chronic conditions. The frustration of the slow process of evolution and health care continued to nag at me." After working as a reform-minded health care policy consultant, Kothari in 2004 joined with a colleague, Dr. Rushika Fernandopulle, and opened a new type of primary-care practice outside of Boston. Their first marketable idea: The Ambulatory Intensive Care Unit (AICU), a more affordable approach to serving the 20% of patients who fall into the highest-risk segment of the population. Today Kothari and Fernandopulle act as consultants - their clinic was absorbed into Massachusetts General Hospital several years ago - and have launched AICU pilot programs in six cities, working with hospitals, clinics, and large employers such as Boeing to deliver a more streamlined version of primary care.
CNN Money June 18, 2009
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By • August 12, 2009
1. $788,000 paid to doctor accused of faking study
Medtronic said on Wednesday that it had paid nearly $800,000 over an eight-year period to a former military surgeon who has been accused by the Army of falsifying a medical journal study involving one of the company’s products. The surgeon, Dr. Timothy R. Kuklo, claimed in the study that the use of a Medtronic bone growth product called Infuse had proved highly beneficial in treating leg injuries suffered by American soldiers in Iraq. The British medical journal that published the article retracted it this year after an internal Army investigation found that Dr. Kuklo had forged the names of four other doctors on the study and had cited data that did not match military records. Other doctors at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where Dr. Kuklo worked until August 2006, said that he had also overstated the benefits of the Medtronic product. Dr. Kuklo, who now works as an assistant medical professor at Washington University in St. Louis, has repeatedly declined to comment on the situation. Medtronic has said it was not involved in any way with the challenged report. The company is under investigation by the Justice Department and Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, in connection with possibly illegally marketing of Infuse through outside physicians like Dr. Kuklo who work for it as consultants. The company has denied doing so. Last month, it suspended Dr. Kuklo’s consulting contract.
The New York Times by Barry Meier, June 18, 2009
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By • August 10, 2009
In January 2005, Neibauer Dental Care had a single office in Waldorf. Less than five years [...]
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Mayo Clinic has the most powerful brand in health care, built over more than a century ago, [...]