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Natropathic doctors practice a form of alternative medicine in which plants, herbs and other natural remedies are used to treat patients. The state of Florida hasn't licensed a natropath since 1955 and only seven are still practicing in the state. But officials accuse some practitioners, such as Ron Steriti, of illegally practicing medicine despite the fact that Steriti is a licensed practitioner in Vermont. Steriti criticizes the state for not having a process by which he can receive his …

> Healthcare industry professionals have had mixed reactions to CMS's Medicare announcements on Tuesday. Report

> IBM is donating 150,000 lines of open-source code to small- and medium-sized practices. The company hopes that it will help these practices afford clinical applications that can operate with larger health information networks. …

Finally some good news for primary docs who wonder why all their hard work hasn't translated into more money. Their compensation appears to be on the rise, according to Modern Healthcare's annual physician compensation survey. It's still at the bottom of the pay scale for physicians overall, but salaries for internists were up 7 to 13 percent, depending on who's compiling the numbers. One theory is that the trend toward hospitalists, who are often internists, has increased …

Following the $253 million jury award in Ernst v. Merck, thousands of people have filed new lawsuits against the drug maker over its painkiller Vioxx. Court documents show that 1,500 new suits have been filed against the company in the eight weeks since the case ended. That brings the total number of suits filed against the company over its maligned Cox-2 inhibitor to 6,500. The award in the Texas case was capped under state laws limiting punitive damages, reducing it dramatically, …

Marketing for Medicare Part D plans starts on Saturday, and amazingly this story hasn't been given more play until now. Senior citizens who sign up with a new insurance company for their Medicare Part D coverage may wind up losing access to their old insurance, according to officials at CMS and other sources. That could lead to a potential disaster, especially in states like California where more than 18 different plans will be available. Expect to hear a lot of criticism from consumer …

Susan Wood, assistant commissioner for women's health at the FDA, resigned to protest the agency's handling of Plan B, claiming that it was politically motivated. Commissioner Lester Crawford claimed that science was the reason for delaying the decision, but Wood said that when she asked a colleague in the commissioner's office when the decision would be made, the answer was, "We're still awaiting a decision from above; it hasn't come down yet."

Meanwhile, HHS Secretary Mike …

As jurors in Texas weigh the company's fate, executives at Merck are considering a sobering reality. Even if Merck does manage to win the lawsuit against it over the role of the painkiller Vioxx in the death of Peter Ernst, the company still faces thousands of other suits making similar charges. Going into Ernst v. Merck, many legal experts had predicted an easy win for Merck. It hasn't quite worked out that way. Many say Houston attorney W. Mark Lanier may have pulled off a major legal …

Girish Kumar of eClinicalWorks runs a successful business that is emerging as one of the leaders in getting full EMRs into the hands of physicians in small practices. While larger group practices of 25 or even 50 or more doctors are adopting EMRs at a rapid rate, the pace is still relatively slow among the smaller practices, which represent the vast majority of American physicians.

The federal government has been talking about interoperability, but Kumar says it hasn't been paying …

Some time ago a group of orthopedic surgeons had what they thought was a very good idea. Why not take information on knee and hip replacements paid for by the government and collect it in a publicly accessible database? A lot of people thought the idea made sense. After all, that way both patients and doctors would have access to crucial information about how well competing products work. But the plan hasn't gone very far. The New York Times reports that current government …