Current Events

Olean General Hospital announced Thursday it mailed letters to 1,915 patients after an internal review raised the possibility that some of them may have received an injection from another patient’s insulin pen.

The issue follows recent news that 716 patients at the Buffalo Veterans Affairs Medical Center may have been exposed to HIV, hepatitis B or hepatitis C because of the inadvertent reuse of insulin pens that were intended to be used only once.

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An internal analysis conducted by Johnson & Johnson in 2011 not long after it recalled a troubled hip implant estimated that the all-metal device would fail within five years in nearly 40 percent of patients who received it, newly disclosed court records show.

Johnson & Johnson never released those projections for the device, the Articular Surface Replacement, or A.S.R., which the company recalled in mid-2010. But at the same time that the medical products giant was performing that analysis, it was publicly playing down similar findings from a British implant registry about the device’s early failure rate.

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Target Corp. has announced a massive recall of children's pajamas because the items failed to meet U.S. federal flammability standards for children's sleepwear. An announcement was issued by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

On Jan. 15, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) announced a recall with cooperation of Target Corp. In this voluntary recall, 560,000 sets of children's pajamas were affected.

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Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), which is fighting more than 10,000 lawsuits over its recalled hip implants, is negotiating a potential settlement with patients that may eventually total more than $2 billion, according to five people familiar with the matter.

J&J, the world’s biggest seller of health-care products, offered to pay more than $200,000 a case, according to the people, a deal which could exceed $2 billion if most plaintiffs accept the terms. Lawyers for hip recipients have so far rejected the offer as too low, the people said.

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Metal hip implants, the subject of thousands of consumer lawsuits, will have to navigate a longer U.S. review process and should only be offered to patients after safer options are considered, government regulators said.

The proposed tightening of regulations by the Food and Drug Administration would apply to metal-on-metal hip implants, which have a higher danger of causing tissue damage and complications than similar devices made from different material. Makers of all-metal, total-hip replacement products will now have to file approval applications for the strictest level of agency device review, the FDA said today in a statement on its website.

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After an estimated 500,000 patients in the United States have received a type of artificial hip that is failing early in many cases, the Food and Drug Administration is proposing rules that could stop manufacturers from selling such implants.

Under the proposal, which the agency is expected to announce on Thursday, makers of artificial hips with all-metal components would have to prove the devices were safe and effective before they could continue selling existing ones or obtain approval for new all-metal designs.

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The Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday released a sharply worded warning letter to St. Jude Medical in which it said it might soon fine or take other actions against the company for failing to address agency concerns about a widely used heart device component.

The component — an electrical wire, or lead, called the Durata — connects an implanted defibrillator to a patient’s heart. In the letter, dated Jan. 10, the agency said that St. Jude had failed to address a variety of concerns about the component arising from an F.D.A. inspection last fall of a company factory in California.

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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has sent a warning letter to St. Jude Medical regarding manufacturing processes at a facility in Southern California, St. Jude and the FDA have confirmed.

Until St. Jude corrects the issues that prompted the letter, the FDA will not approve certain types of cardiac rhythm management products from the Little Canada-based medical technology company, the company confirmed Monday. The plant in Sylmar, Calif., is where St. Jude manufactures the Durata defibrillator lead, a wire that connects the defibrillator to the heart.

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Thousands of individuals could receive new hearings on their disability benefit claims as part of a proposed settlement addressing allegations of hostility and bias against five federal administrative law judges in Queens, New York.

The proposed class action settlement, filed Friday in Brooklyn federal court, aims to resolve a 2011 lawsuit accusing the five administrative law judges, or ALJs, of failing to give fair hearings to disabled individuals who appeared before them.

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Federal banking regulators are trumpeting an $8.5 billion settlement this week with 10 banks as quick justice for aggrieved homeowners, but the deal is actually a way to quietly paper over a deeply flawed review of foreclosed loans across America, according to current and former regulators and consultants.

To avoid criticism as the review stalled and consultants collected more than $1 billion in fees, the regulators, led by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, abandoned the effort after examining a sliver of nearly four million loans in foreclosure, the regulators and consultants said.

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Businesses and individuals who claim BP's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico cost them money have been paid more than $1 billion through the company's class-action settlement with a team of private plaintiffs' attorneys, court-supervised claims administrator Patrick Juneau said.

Juneau said the payments reached the $1 billion mark before the end of 2012. He also said 95 percent of claimants who were offered payments decided to accept them.

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