(Reuters) – The owner of a telemarketing company implicated in the largest component of a $1.2 billion Medicare fraud involving the supply of medically unnecessary orthotic braces pleaded guilty to criminal charges on Friday, the U.S. Department of Justice said. Lester Stockett, the owner of Video Doctor USA and Telemed Health Group and chief executive […]
NEW YORK — U.S. health officials on Friday again urged people to stop vaping until they figure out why some are coming down with serious breathing illnesses. Officials have identified about 450 possible cases, including as many as five deaths, in 33 states. The count includes newly reported deaths in California, Indiana and Minnesota. No […]
(Reuters Health) – Even overweight and obese people who take certain psychiatric drugs associated with weight gain may be able to shed excess pounds by focusing on healthy eating and exercise habits, a recent study suggests. Researchers followed 17,519 obese and overweight adults enrolled in a weight loss program focused on lifestyle changes at Wharton […]
(Reuters Health) – Older Americans who get home healthcare through traditional Medicare plans may have access to better quality services than their counterparts who enroll in private plans known as Medicare Advantage, a U.S. study suggests. To examine home health agency quality by insurance type, researchers analyzed data on almost 4.4 million home health admissions […]
LONDON (Reuters) – People who survive Ebola virus infection face a dramatically higher risk of dying – probably from severe kidney damage – within a year of leaving hospital, according to a study of survivors of an epidemic in Guinea. FILE PHOTO: A health worker dressed in protective suit disinfects an ambulance transporting a suspected […]
(Reuters) – Novartis AG’s gene therapy for blindness, Luxturna, is recommended for use on England’s public health service, the country’s healthcare cost-effectiveness watchdog NICE said on Tuesday. Novartis owns the rights to sell the one-time gene therapy developed by Spark Therapeutics outside the United States. The decision by the National Institute for Health and Care […]
(Reuters Health) – Exercise can do more to lower the risk of premature death for patients with cardiovascular disease than for healthy people, a new study suggests. Healthy people did have a lower chance of dying during the study when they were more physically active. But the beneficial effect of exercise was more pronounced for […]
(Reuters) – The U.S. patent office will review patents on Alexion Pharmaceuticals Inc’s blood disorder treatment Soliris, after Amgen Inc challenged them, court filings showed on Friday. FILE PHOTO: An Amgen sign is seen at the company’s office in South San Francisco, California in this October 21, 2013 file photo. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith The move deals […]
(Reuters) – An unnamed hospital in Oklahoma used contaminated gastroscopes in procedures performed on nearly a thousand patients in recent months, device maker Pentax Medical told U.S. regulators last month, putting the patients at risk of exposure to bacteria that can cause infections. In a July 22 report here that only recently became public and […]
(Reuters Health) – Patients who have so-called percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) procedures to restore blood flow to the heart may be more likely to have complications with non-cardiac surgery than other people, a U.S. study suggests. PCI is commonly performed for ischemic heart disease, or heart problems caused by narrowed arteries, and for so-called acute […]