high profile

It's déjà vu all over again. The Department of Veterans Affairs, which has already been part of one high-profile data loss scandal within the past 12 months, reported this week that an Alabama hospital has lost data on 1.8 million veterans and doctors. In this case, the data was on a portable hard drive, used to back up the employee's desktop computer, which has been missing from an Alabama VA location for about three weeks. The drive contained Social Security and other …

Citing rising costs from uninsured and underinsured patients, analysts say bad debt will continue to undercut hospitals' profits in the coming year, and there's no relief in sight. "[T]he uninsured and underinsured population is growing faster than hospitals can boost admissions or raise prices to insurers," said Robert Hawkins, an analyst with Stifel Nicolaus & Co. in Baltimore. The issue of uninsured and underinsured patients is a wide-ranging problem with no simple answer, though a …

It's not often that you see a hospital CEO walk away from the lucrative, high-profile job to take on the backbreaking work of nursing. But that's just what former respiratory therapist and Milton Hospital CEO George Geary did. At age 56, he went to nursing school, and now, at age 59, is working overnight shifts at a Boston-area hospital as a green recruit. It's not that Geary failed at being a CEO--Milton Hospital has run in the black for 14 years--it's because he wants to be closer to patients. Article

A new report from PriceWaterhouseCoopers argues that with lots of high-profile scrutiny under way, non-profit hospitals need to do a much better job of measuring and communicating the community benefit and charity care they provide. What's more, PWC suggests, hospitals will need to develop patient-friendly pricing schemes to compliment their community-friendly policies. The consulting firm breaks down its recommendations across reporting, pricing and business relationship strategies, and …

Medical device companies are winning venture capital funding that until recently had been going to biotech companies. Last year, VC investments in biotech and medical device companies rose to a five-year high of $6 billion, according to the annual MoneyTree Survey. Investment in biotech ventures fell 7 percent but rose 25 percent in medical devices. The Wall Street Journal reports that investors are betting the market for devices will continue to grow as the US population ages. …

The Food and Drug Administration will review three potential blockbuster drugs in early September. Observers say the agency may raise the bar after the high profile drug safety stories of the last year. The three new drugs include Pfizer's inhaled insulin Exubera and two drugs developed by Bristol-Myers Squibb: the new rheumatoid arthritis treatment Orencia, and Pargluva, which targets adult-onset diabetes.

- see this story in The Wall Street Journal (sub. req.)

WellPoint said on Wednesday that it has signed a seven-year deal with IBM worth $719 million. The contract is the latest high-profile move in health care for Big Blue, which set tongues wagging earlier this year when it announced that it will focus on the sector. The news means that about 360 information technology jobs at WellPoint will move over to IBM.  

- see this …

A week after his confirmation as FDA commissioner, Lester Crawford found himself the target of criticism from House Democrats angry about the way his agency has responded to safety problems in the pharmaceutical and medical device industries. The showdown came at a congressional hearing on the agency's $1.5 billion budget for 2006. Crawford responded by defending his agency's track record as one of the best in the federal government. The FDA head fielded questions on the agency's handling …