flu season news from FierceHealthcare

> CMS has approved an initial group of 325 medical equipment suppliers to participate in its new competitive-bidding program, despite questions hanging over the second phase of the program. Read more...

Uh oh--this can't be good. A multitude of insurers have have posted rather disappointing financial results, including UnitedHealth Group, Humana, Health Net and WellPoint--and now another big Read more...

While it hasn't been great for patients, the flu bug has done hospitals a favor. This year's crop of flu shots turned out to be less effective than expected for current strains of the virus, so more Read more...

It's been a good first quarter for hospital company Universal Health Services, which saw a substantial jump in net earnings over the same quarter last year. UHS's net income climbed 24.6 percent for Read more...

It seems that LifePoint Hospitals took a beating in fiscal 2007. The Brentwood, Tenn.-based chain said that despite raised revenues, profits fell 20 percent, undermined by volume losses of 15 percent Read more...

New research suggests that hospital visits decrease as the level of cost the patient bears go up. While this might be worrisome--we don't want people to avoid hospital trips and end up sicker--the study also found that the higher co-pays actually didn't have a negative effect on patient health. In fact, they saw no increase in negative clinical events such hospitalization, intensive care admission or deaths. To gather their data, researchers followed more than two million …

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If Roche has its way, a gaggle of happy penguins will charm consumers into stocking up on flu drug Tamiflu. Using penguin characters from a current children's feature as a theme, Roche Pharmaceuticals has developed a multi-million dollar ad campaign to create demand for the costly medication. Tamiflu, which has attracted international attention as a possible stopgap in the war against …

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With flu season right around the corner, inevitably health experts will once again sound the bird flu alarm. In the Wall Street Journal, primary care doctor Benjamin Brewer expresses his concern that the nation’s emergency departments will be pushed beyond capacity if a pandemic does hit the U.S. Many people head to the ER each year because of the flu, and dealing with these patients in addition to a bird flu outbreak would send ERs over the edge. But Brewer notes that there may be a simple Internet tool that can keep this from happening.

In order to avoid unnecessary visits to the ER, Brewer proposes that patients have access to an online questionnaire to see if their symptoms match that of the flu and require a trip to the ER. “At a time when influenza is occurring in a community, clinical guidelines--without an in-person exam--are about 77 percent accurate in diagnosing the illness, according to a study,” Brewer notes. If patient’s symptoms don’t match the questionnaire, then they can avoid a trip to the doctor’s office. If their results are positive, they would be told to receive treatment from a pharmacy.

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With flu season right around the corner, health experts will once again sound the bird flu alarm. In his Wall Street Journal column, primary care doctor Benjamin Brewer agrees that the nation's emergency departments will be pushed beyond capacity if a pandemic does hit the U.S. But Brewer thinks that there's a simple Internet tool that can keep this from happening. Article

It looks as though there will be no repeat of the flu vaccine shortages of the past few years. Vaccine makers say they are on track to produce at least 100 million doses of flu vaccine in time for next year's flu season. That's far better than the 86 million doses that producers managed for the 2005-2006 season. The estimates came as vaccine manufacturers, public health officials and influenza experts met in Chicago for the National Influenza Vaccine Summit. Officials say they want to …

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