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Southwest Pulmonary and Critical Care Fellowships
In Memoriam

News

Last 50 News Postings

 (Click on title to be directed to posting, most recent listed first)

Former US Surgeon General Criticizing $5,000 Emergency Room Bill
Nurses Launch Billboard Campaign Against Renewal of Desert Regional
   Medical Center Lease
$1 Billion Donation Eliminates Tuition at Albert Einstein Medical School
Kern County Hospital Authority Accused of Overpaying for Executive
   Services
SWJPCCS Associate Editor has Essay on Reining in Air Pollution Published
   in NY Times
Amazon Launches New Messaged-Based Virtual Healthcare Service
Hospitals Say They Lose Money on Medicare Patients but Make Millions
Trust in Science Now Deeply Polarized
SWJPCC Associate Editor Featured in Albuquerque Journal
Poisoning by Hand Sanitizers
Healthcare Layoffs During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Practice Fusion Admits to Opioid Kickback Scheme
Arizona Medical Schools Offer Free Tuition for Primary Care Commitment
Determining if Drug Price Increases are Justified
Court Overturns CMS' Site-Neutral Payment Policy
Pulmonary Disease Linked to Vaping
CEO Compensation-One Reason Healthcare Costs So Much
Doctor or Money Shortage in California?
FDA Commissioner Gottlieb Resigns
Physicians Generate an Average $2.4 Million a Year Per Hospital
Drug Prices Continue to Rise
New Center for Physician Rights
CMS Decreases Clinic Visit Payments to Hospital-Employed Physicians
   and Expands Decreases in Drug Payments 340B Cuts
Big Pharma Gives Millions to Congress
Gilbert Hospital and Florence Hospital at Anthem Closed
CMS’ Star Ratings Miscalculated
VA Announces Aggressive New Approach to Produce Rapid Improvements
   in VA Medical Centers
Healthcare Payments Under the Budget Deal: Mostly Good News
   for Physicians
Hospitals Plan to Start Their Own Generic Drug Company
Flu Season and Trehalose
MedPAC Votes to Scrap MIPS
CMS Announces New Payment Model
Varenicline (Chantix®) Associated with Increased Cardiovascular Events
Tax Cuts Could Threaten Physicians
Trump Nominates Former Pharmaceutical Executive as HHS Secretary
Arizona Averages Over 25 Opioid Overdoses Per Day
Maryvale Hospital to Close
California Enacts Drug Pricing Transparency Bill
Senate Health Bill Lacks 50 Votes Needed to Proceed
Medi-Cal Blamed for Poor Care in Lawsuit
Senate Republican Leadership Releases Revised ACA Repeal and Replace Bill
Mortality Rate Will Likely Increase Under Senate Healthcare Bill
University of Arizona-Phoenix Receives Full Accreditation
Limited Choice of Obamacare Insurers in Some Parts of the Southwest
Gottlieb, the FDA and Dumbing Down Medicine
Salary Surveys Report Declines in Pulmonologist, Allergist and Nurse 
   Incomes
CDC Releases Ventilator-Associated Events Criteria
Medicare Bundled Payment Initiative Did Not Reduce COPD Readmissions
Younger Smokers Continue to Smoke as Adults: Implications for Raising the
   Smoking Age to 21
Most Drug Overdose Deaths from Nonprescription Opioids

 

 

For complete news listings click here.

 

The Southwest Journal of Pulmonary, Critical Care & Sleep periodically publishes news articles relevant to  pulmonary, critical care or sleep medicine which are not covered by major medical journals.

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Entries in wearable (1)

Thursday
Dec312015

Top Medical News Stories 2015

Here is our list of the top seven medical news stories for 2015 with special emphasis on the Southwest.

7. Wearable health devices

A wave of wearable computing devices such as Fitbit and UP wristbands have people keeping track of how much they sit, stand, walk, climb stairs and calories they consume (1). These fitness-tracking devices herald a series of devices that will detect and monitor serious diseases. However, these so-called medical-grade wearables require approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, a regulatory hurdle avoided by the fitness-tracking devices which will likely slow their introduction.

6. Caitlyn Jenner

Caitlyn Jenner became the most famous transgender woman in the world following an interview published in Vanity Fair (2). The Vanity Fair website saw 11.6 million visits curious about the former Olympic athlete. Though Jenner publicly shared her gender identity, many transgender Americans do not-12% of gender non-conforming adults said they had never told anyone about their gender identity. Jenner's "coming out" has and will likely continue to draw increasing attention to gender dysphoria. In Arizona, the Tucson VA recently established a transgender clinic (3).

5. Ebola

Two years after the beginning of an Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the virus continues to strike fear in the US. The Ebola outbreak sickened more than 28,630 people and killed at least 11,300, according to the World Health Organization (4). While the epidemic subsided in 2015, the virus has never completely gone away. The only Ebola cases today are in Liberia, a nation twice declared "Ebola free" suggesting that eliminating Ebola may be difficult.

4. Terrorism in San Bernardino

Multiple terror attacks have occurred in far off places like Afghanistan and Paris, but terror was brought to the Southwest in 2015 by 2 terrorists who killed 14 at a holiday party earlier in December in San Bernardino, California (5). The attack generated concern about emergency preparedness and will likely generate training for triaging and care of multiple gunshot victims.

3. Vaccines

A measles outbreak that started at Disneyland spread to 117 people earlier this year and changed the national conversation about vaccinations (1). The outbreak also drew attention to Disneyland's Orange County where a relatively large percentage of the population is not vaccinated. The outbreak spurred California and Vermont to strengthen their school vaccine laws. Vermont repealed its "personal belief" exemption, which allowed unvaccinated children to attend school if their parents objected to vaccines for philosophical reasons. California went even further, putting an end to both personal belief and religious exemptions.

2. Opioids

Deaths from opioid drug overdoses have hit an all-time record in the U.S., rising 14 percent in just one year (6). More than 47,000 people died from these drug overdoses last year according to the CDC. Concomitant with the introduction of the pain scale as the "fifth" vital sign and continued criticism of doctors for undertreating pain, prescription opioid sales have quadrupled in the US since 1999. The CDC announced that it will issue guidelines to reduce opioid overdoses and prescribing.

1. Prescription Drug Prices

Concern over high drug costs has been building for years. Prices for cancer drugs often exceed $100,000 a year and Gilead priced its breakthrough hepatitis C drug at $84,000 for a 12-week treatment (4). Outrage over drug prices boiled over in 2015 when Turing Pharmaceuticals purchased the rights to pyrimethamine and immediately hiked the price from $13.50 a pill to $750 a pill. Pyrimethamine (Daraprim®) is a medication used for protozoal infections such as Toxoplasma gondii, an infection usually seen in AIDS patients. An October poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 77% of those surveyed said that drug prices should be a top priority for Congress and the White House should and 63% favored government action to lower prescription drug prices.

Richard A. Robbins, MD

Editor, SWJPCC

References

  1. Reddy S. Year in review: top 10 health issues of 2015. Wall Street Journal. December, 29, 2015. Available at: http://www.wsj.com/articles/year-in-review-top-10-health-issues-of-2015-1451341107 (accessed 12/31/15).
  2. Chalabi M. 2015: the top news stories of the year in numbers. The Guardian. December 28, 2015. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2015/dec/28/2015-news-stories-of-the-year-in-numbers-police-shootings-syria-gay-marriage-star-wars (accessed 12/31/15).
  3. Transgender services. Available at: http://www.tucson.va.gov/services/Transgender_Services.asp (accessed 12/31/15).
  4. Szabo L. That $750 pill and more: 2015's top health stories. USA Today. December 15, 2015. Available at: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/12/15/five-medical-stories-led-news-2015/77296624/ (accessed 12/31/15).
  5. Domonoske C. San Bernardino shootings: what we know, one day after. NPR. December 3, 2015. Available at: http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/12/03/458277103/san-bernardino-shootings-what-we-know-one-day-after (accessed 12/31/15).
  6. Siegel R. Draft of CDC's new prescribing guidelines stirs debate. NPR. December 29, 2015. Available at: http://www.npr.org/2015/12/29/461409296/draft-of-cdcs-new-prescribing-guidelines-stirs-debate (accessed 12/31/15).

Cite as: Robbins RA. Top medical news stories 2015. Southwest J Pulm Crit Care. 2015;11(6):285-6. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13175/swjpcc159-15 PDF