Current Events

SAN FRANCISCO — A St. Louis-based drug maker will pay $3.5 million to settle allegations that it paid doctors to prescribe “outdated, third rate” antidepressants and sleep aids, the U.S. attorney’s office in San Francisco announced Thursday.

A former employee of Mallinckrodt LLC originally filed the lawsuit in 2008 under the federal False Claims Act. The employee alleged that between 2005 and 2010, the company paid doctors consulting and speaking fees and other inducements in exchange for prescribing drugs that otherwise would not have been prescribed.

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Talk about a family feud.

Park Avenue Medical Associates, which runs 120 health-care facilities across New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts, settled Medicare fraud allegations brought by the son of the chain’s chief medical officer and founding partner, The Post has learned.

The Manhattan US Attorney’s office, which picked up the whistleblower’s complaint in March, agreed to settle a probe and Park Avenue Medical agreed to pay a $1 million settlement, according to documents filed in Manhattan federal court Thursday.

In the settlement, Park Avenue Medical admits to instances of overbilling.

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An investigator probing the July 6 Asiana Airlines crash said Wednesday that lax monitoring of cockpit instruments and crewmates was the industry's "problem that never went away."

Speaking at an airline pilots' union safety conference, National Transportation Safety Board member Robert L. Sumwalt did not address the panel's review of the deadly July 6 crash. But he noted a 1994 NTSB report that found lapsed monitoring factored in 94 percent of aviation mishaps studied.

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ORLANDO, Fla -- U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday that it's time to question laws that expand self-defense - such as Florida's "stand your ground" law — in the wake of the George Zimmerman acquittal.

A day after he called Trayvon Martin's death "unnecessary," Holder told people at a national convention of the NAACP that such laws can be dangerous and that the federal government plans to do a thorough investigation into the Feb. 26, 2012, fatal shooting.

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Intuitive Surgical Inc. (ISRG), the maker of the da Vinci Surgical System robots, informed customers that 30 devices may not have been tested properly, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The FDA, calling it a “class 2 recall,” said the action affects Intuitive’s da Vinci Si Vision System Cart, Si Surgeon Side Cart, Instrument Control Box and Dual Camera Controller, in notices posted on its website yesterday. Factory testing on the systems may not meet compliance standards, the regulator said. Intuitive sent the Urgent Device Correction notice to all affected customers on June 27, the FDA said.

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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday announced the recall of a Medtronic Inc. product used with the company’s Paradigm insulin pump, saying the product could result in diabetes patients dangerously getting too much — or too little — insulin.

The Class I recall involves Medtronic’s MiniMed Paradigm Insulin Infusion Sets. Last month, Medtronic sent an urgent safety notification to doctors and other health care professionals warning that if insulin or other ­fluids come into contact with the inside of the device’s tubing connectors, it could temporarily block the vents that allow the pump to properly prime. If that happens, the patient may receive too much or too little insulin, potentially leading to serious illness, the FDA said.

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A hospital in upstate New York was fined and forced to undergo an independent quality assurance analysis after a media outlet’s Freedom of Information Act request revealed egregious acts of medical malpractice on the part of staff and doctors.

One example of the findings: A drug overdose victim who was deemed dead by Syracuse St. Joseph’s Hospital Health Center doctors and prepped for organ removal shocked the operating room when she opened her eyes, the Telegraph reported.

Yet medical professionals shouldn’t have been so surprised, the investigation found. They had plenty of tips that the woman - a 41-year-old drug addict who later committed suicide - was not dead.

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CR Bard Inc. (BCR) officials knew some of the company’s vaginal-mesh devices were made of a plastic deemed unsuitable for human implantation and hid that flaw from doctors and women who used the products, a lawyer said.

Executives of a Bard unit made implants for shoring up pelvic muscles out of plastic that carried a warning saying it shouldn’t be permanently implanted in people, Henry Garrard, a lawyer for a woman suing over the devices, told a jury in federal court in West Virginia.

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U.S. safety regulators may add nearly 5,000 cars to a recall of the Chevrolet Malibu Eco, Buick LaCrosse and Buick Regal sedans.

In May, General Motors announced that it would recall more than 38,000 of the 2012 and 2013 cars because a defective generator control module could stall the engine or cause a fire. The cars have GM's eAssist gas-electric hybrid system.

Unsold vehicles were not part of the recall, and GM said it would test them to make sure they were OK. But the government says there was a fire in a car that had been tested.

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It's true. Four cars, not four models, or four model years, but four units of the Chevy Volt were recalled late last month. How do you identify four cars of an estimated 30,000 that have been sold since late 2010?

"In this case, the supplier of the part was able to trace the exact number of affected vehicles and it turned out to be the number four," said Alan Alder of GM.

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Medicare will pay the costs of brain imaging that uses a Eli Lilly & Co. (LLY) drug to help diagnose Alzheimer’s disease only for patients participating in approved clinical studies, regulators proposed.

There isn’t enough evidence to show the scan will benefit all people with dementia, though in some cases it may help diagnose whether a patient has Alzheimer’s, the most common form of dementia, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said today in its proposed coverage decision. Medicare, the U.S. health plan for the elderly and disabled, will reimburse patients for a scan if they are part of an approved clinical trial for the prevention, treatment or better diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, the agency said. 

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