Author: P Hasselbacher

Rocky Rollout of Sunshine Act— The Open Payments Program for Physicians.

Another Accountable Care Act initiative with website problems!

For many years now, many public policy concerns have been expressed about the huge amounts of money that pharmaceutical companies and medical device manufacturers give directly to physicians and academic medical centers. An old drug detail-man in Kentucky once told me his company gave Cadillacs to the highest prescribers of his drugs. I doubt that things are that blatant anymore, but so much money flows into individual and departmental pockets that it is difficult to assemble members for expert panels of the FDA, CDC, or other policymaking organizations who are not receiving money from drug and device makers. Full disclosure was supposed to solve the problem, but that does not work. The Open Payments initiative is part of a larger movement for greater transparency and accountability. I plan to write more about this, including my own experience over the years interacting with Pig Pharma and Big Devices.

Continue reading “Rocky Rollout of Sunshine Act— The Open Payments Program for Physicians.”

Stopgap Bill to Provide Healthcare to Veterans Passed by Congress.

Last week, Congress finally sent to the President the “Veterans Access, Choice, and Accountability Act of 2014.” While the “accountability” in this title refers to making heads roll among the administration of the Veterans Administration, there was clearly some embarrassment and a deficit of legislative accountability that forced a dragging-and-kicking pair of adversarial political parties to agree to bail out a Veterans Administration that had been negligently and predictably starved into delinquency.

Vets couldn’t get timely appointments.
The substance of the bill deals almost entirely with the problem that veterans were facing unacceptably long delays in obtaining appointments for medical services. Not unexpectedly, a few items from the larger mouldering VA appropriation bills were tacked on. Since these were presumably items that were easy to agree on, I predict that passing the rest of the necessary VA legislation will become even more difficult, if it passes at all. Continue reading “Stopgap Bill to Provide Healthcare to Veterans Passed by Congress.”

Kentucky Attorney General Moves to Intervene in Norton- UofL- Kosair Disputes over Children’s Hospital.

[Updated in Comments Aug 23, 2014]

Next week, Kentucky’s Attorney General will plead in Jefferson and Franklin County Circuit Courts to be added as an intervening defendant in the disputes between Norton Healthcare and the University of Louisville over control of Norton Kosair Children’s Hospital, and that between Kosair Charities and Norton over the use of charitable contributions and the right to raise money in the name of the hospital. The outcomes will ultimately determine the relationships (or lack thereof) between Norton, Kosair, and the University. Relations have not been going well in recent years with UofL seeking to switch its pediatric activities from Norton to KentuckyOne Health, and Kosair charities moving to substitute UofL for Norton as a chief beneficiary of its charity. Continue reading “Kentucky Attorney General Moves to Intervene in Norton- UofL- Kosair Disputes over Children’s Hospital.”

Why Is There Only One NCI Cancer Center in Louisville?

In Reporter Michael McKay’s account of the UofL Board meeting earlier this month when progress towards the University’s 2020 Plan was summarized, and when the post-fraud “Audit” was formally presented; President James Ramsey commented on the University’s failure to earn a National Cancer Institute (NCI) designation for its James Graham Brown Cancer Center. Dr. Ramsey stated that it was unlikely that UofL would receive an NCI designation because the UK program is so close. (The Markey Cancer Center at the University of Kentucky was designated as an NCI Comprehensive Cancer Center in 2013.) Dr. Ramsey is said to have implied that UofL had been in talks for some sort of “partnership” with UK before that institution went on its way alone. These comments sound more to me like excuses than explanations. I found nothing in the NCI application documents that would indicate that distance from another center would be a factor. Indeed, depth of collaborations with other research and clinical centers is highly desirable if not essential.

Continue reading “Why Is There Only One NCI Cancer Center in Louisville?”