% Quality Assurance With frustration growing among Americans who are being charged exorbitant prices for medical treatment, a bipartisan group of senators Tuesday unveiled a plan to protect patients from surprise bills and high charges from hospitals or doctors who are not in their insurance networks. The draft legislation, which sponsors said is designed to… Read More »

Column Title In a wide-ranging scheme, AbbVie (ABBV) used a combination of old-fashioned kickbacks to doctors and a stealthy network of nurses to illegally boost prescriptions of its best-selling Humira treatment, according to a lawsuit filed on Tuesday by the California insurance commissioner. Over a five-year period, the drug maker offered physicians a familiar menu of… Read More »

Sometimes IV bags are hard for hospitals to come by. Other times it’s injectable folic acid to treat anemias. Right now the tissue-numbing agent lidocaine is in short supply. Shortages of commonplace generic drugshave plagued hospitals in recent years. And with short supplies and fewer suppliers for key drugs, there have been price increases. Hospital… Read More »

  An NIH-funded clinical trial suggested that the anti-inflammatory drug ibudilast may slow brain shrinkage caused by progressive MS. Robert J. Fox, M.D., Cleveland Clinic, OH. Results from a clinical trial of more than 250 participants with progressive multiple sclerosis(MS) revealed that ibudilast was better than a placebo in slowing down brain shrinkage. The study… Read More »

A blood test can help detect whether patients with advanced prostate cancer will respond to a certain treatment, according to a new study. This approach could help better inform the choice of therapy and lead to improved outcomes. In the study, researchers used a liquid biopsy test developed by Epic Sciences to examine circulating tumor… Read More »

Chris Jackson/Getty Images A focus on artificial intelligence could lead to fewer people losing their sight. Tech industry insiders regularly herald AI as the solution to all of our problems, included those posed by health care. London-based DeepMind, owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet, focuses heavily on the specifics of using artificial intelligence in health… Read More »

A few years ago Advanced Medical Strategies (AMS) published an article covering how current auto-adjudication systems left much to be desired. Does auto-adjudication save money? Sure. It easily sorts through the low-hanging fruit, processing a large number of claims both cheaply and swiftly. However, it generally fails when it comes to these three booming components:… Read More »

People at risk of a tough-to-treat, deadly form of breast cancer may now have a better chance of early diagnosis and protection against relapse. Researchers at the Mayo Clinic identified genetic mutations associated with triple-negative breast cancer, a type that generally requires extensive chemotherapy and and has lower five-year survival rates than other forms of… Read More »

The FDA this week granted a third Breakthrough Therapy designation to lenvatinib (Lenvima), an oral kinase inhibitor used in combination with the anti-PD-1 therapy pembrolizumab (Keytruda). The most recent designation is for the treatment of patients with advanced and/or metastatic non-microsatellite instability high/proficient mismatch repair endometrial carcinoma (EC) who progressed following at least 1 prior… Read More »

The FDA cleared the Magtrace and Sentimag Magnetic Localization System for guiding lymph node biopsies in patients with breast cancer undergoing mastectomy. The Magtrace and Sentimag Magnetic Localization System, also called Sentimag System, (Endomagnetics) uses magnetic detection during lymph biopsy to identify sentinel lymph nodes for surgical removal. “Sentinel lymph node biopsies are crucial for… Read More »