Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from mobile.nytimes.com
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Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from mobile.nytimes.com
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| The California Workers' Compensation Institute (CWCI) released their study of controlling pharmaceuticals on October 6, 2014. They acknowledge that Washington and Texas have each implemented drug formularies, and have enjoyed cost savings as a result. The complete report is here. Their data helps with the question of whether a formulary might be part of the solution elsewhere, California in particular. Formulary restrictions are not new. Texas enacted legislation in 2005 that led to the deployment of its formulary. The results have been remarkable. Prescription volume has dropped and the cost of "non-formulary drugs" decreased by 80% according to the Workers' Compensation Research Institute. I summarized some of the WCRI findings in a June 2014 post. Another interesting point on closed formularies is the control they afford regarding specific medications or potentially types of medication. The Texas experience with Zohydro, and its recent approval by the FDA is discussed in a December 2013 post. Essentially, while others have wondered about the effect of "heroin in a pill," Texas simply did not add it to their formulary, and that is that. For a doctor to prescribe it in a Texas Comp case is not impossible, but it will require paperwork and... |
FIGURE 1. Percentage of emergency department visits for nonfatal crash injuries among motor vehicle occupants that result in hospitalization, by age group — National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, United States, 2012 |
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| Relatives of the first person to die of Ebola in the United States, joined by the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr., continued on Saturday to denounce the treatment he and his family had received from a hospital here and from Texas officials, claiming that he had been cremated without their knowledge or permission and given substandard care because he was African. Josephus Weeks, a nephew of the Ebola victim — Thomas Eric Duncan, 42, a Liberian who died Wednesday at the Dallas hospital where he had been found to have Ebola on Sept. 30 — said his uncle had been “handled poorly, unfairly, and an injustice was done.” Mr. Weeks spoke to reporters on Saturday in Chicago with Mr. Jackson and Mr. Duncan’s mother, Nowai Gartay. They asked why Mr. Duncan had not been taken to Nebraska Medical Center, where two Americans who contracted the disease in West Africa have been treated. And they said the Dallas hospital, Texas Health Presbyterian, had not immediately informed them that Mr. Duncan had died and had led them to believe that he was still alive. “I feel bad about my son,” Ms. Gartay said inside a chapel at the Chicago headquarters of Mr. Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH Coalition. “We call the hospital — they know that my son died, and they didn’t tell me. They only told me, ‘You can’t talk to your son.’ ” Mr. Jackson said the other Ebola victims in the United States “came back to... |
| Infectious diseases are compensable conditions under most state workers' compensation laws. Todays post is shared from northjersey.com An NBC news crew that was worked alongside an Ebola-stricken cameraman in Liberia has been placed under mandatory quarantine through Oct. 22, New Jersey health officials announced Saturday. The state Department of Health issued the order Friday evening, after a voluntary 21-day isolation agreement was violated by the crew, according to a notice posted on the health department's Web site. The notice stressed that the crew remains "symptom-free" and that there was "no reason for concern of exposure to the community." Neither health officials nor an NBC News spokesperson would say who violated the order, how many people were being quarantined or locate where the quarantine was being carried out. But Princeton Police Chief Nicholas Sutter confirmed that his agency, in conjunction with the Princeton Health Department, was enforcing the order. He believed three people, all in Princeton, had been quarantined. He referred all other comment to the state Health Department. The NBC team was led by Chief Medical Editor Nancy Snyderman, who lives in Princeton, according to her bio on the NBC News website. Freelancer Ashoka Mukpo, 33, contracted Ebola while working as a camera operator for Snyderman's team in Liberia, where the virus has killed more than 2,000 people, according to NBC News. He is being treated in Nebraska, where... |
The new daily pill Harvoni costs $94,500 for 12 weeks and $63,000 for eight weeks — both cheaper than some existing hepatitis C treatments, according to the drugmaker. But some patient advocates are already upset about the price after nearly revolting against Gilead’s first hepatitis C therapy, Sovaldi, which became the best-selling new drug ever when it hit the market late last year at $84,000 for 12 weeks. Harvoni, which combines Sovaldi and a new drug called ledipasvir, is expected to push Gilead’s overall hepatitis C drug sales to $12 billion this year and more than $15 billion next year, said Michael Yee, a biotechnology analyst at RBC Capital Markets. “It is a major breakthrough to have yet another regimen that takes two drugs and combines it into one, and shortens the treatment of care for patients,” he said. Debates over cost Sales of Sovaldi were $2.3 billion in the first quarter and $3.5 billion in the second, putting it on track to become one of the world’s best-selling medicines. At the same time, its... |
| Today's post is shared from authored by The Honorable David Langham is the Deputy Chief Judge of Compensation Claims for the Florida Office of Judges of Compensation Claims and Division of Administrative Hearings. Contact him at david_langham@doah.state.fl.us. It is shared from his blog lojcc.blogspot.com/ I traveled to the International Association of Industrial Accident Boards and Commissions (IAIABC) convention in Austin, Texas last week. It was their 100th anniversary convention. Amazing that this convention has been meeting for 100 years when you reflect that workers' compensation itself just reached its 100th American anniversary. I sat quitely in the Commissioner's Forum on Tuesday afternoon, listening to what is going on around the world and the industry. There were 41 leaders on the panel, which makes for a very diverse discussion of what is being tried, what has worked and what has not. The discussion was led by Dwight Lovan of Kentucky, who will be the IAIABC President for the next year. He somehow noticed when I entered the room, and called upon me to give what perspective I could on "that constitutional case in Florida." He is not alone in his interest. I hear from other states periodically. They are curious. There is much discussion about the "what" of the case, that is what conclusions the trial judge reached, and what that means. There is ample disagreement about this in the legal world. There is also much discussion still about... |
Motor vehicle crashes are a leading cause of injury in the US—harmful and expensive.What works to prevent crash injuries?
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| Two lawsuits have been filed in Tarrant County against Quickway Transportation and its driver, Russell Wayne Staley of Saginaw, following a Sept. 26 crash that killed four college softball teammates. The parents of Brooke Deckard filed their suit in district court Monday. Deckard, 20, of Blue Ridge; Jaiden Pelton, 19, of Telephone; Meagan Richardson, 19, of Wylie; and Katelynn Woodlee, 18, of Dodd City were killed in the wreck. Staley’s northbound truck crossed the grass median of Interstate 35 about 47 miles into Oklahoma and slammed into the southbound bus that was returning the team to North Central Texas College in Gainesville after a game. Another lawsuit was filed Friday on behalf of Rachel Hitt, 19, of Scurry. She was one of two players, both from Kaufman County, who required several days of hospital treatment. Each suit seeks a jury trial and more than $1 million in damages. The suits accuse 53-year-old Staley of distracted driving and say that Quickway was negligent in letting him drive. Investigations into the crash are expected to take several weeks. The Oklahoma Highway Patrol is conducting a criminal investigation. The National Transportation Safety Board is conducting a safety investigation that could lead to possible road improvements at the site near Davis, Okla. Investigators have said the truck left the roadway at highway speed, 70 mph, and crossed about 950 feet of median without braking or swerving. However, some deceleration may have occurred, and no... |
Eloise Soler at her home near Oso Bay, Texas. Soler was sickened by contaminated medication that she received during heart surgery at the Corpus Christi Medical Center. Tests showed that Soler and others were sickened by Rhodococcus equi, a soil bacteria that typically infects horses and other grazing animals.(Photo: Todd Yates for USA TODAY) The infection came out of nowhere, 36 hours after Eloise Soler's heart surgery last summer at the Corpus Christi Medical Center in South Texas. As her fever spiked to 103, other patients developed similar symptoms. Doctors raced to pinpoint the cause. Tests showed that all of the patients had been sickened by the same bacteria, Rhodococcus equi, which typically infects horses and other grazing animals, and they all fell ill after infusions of the same drug, calcium gluconate. The drug was made 200 miles away by Specialty Compounding, which sits in a category of pharmacies that mix unique or hard-to-find drugs not only for individual patients, but also in batches for doctors and hospitals. By the time the company recalled the medication days later, investigators believed it had sickened at least 15 people; two had died. "You think because there are so many controls on drugs that you're not going to be given something that will make you sick," says Soler, 60, who spent months recovering. "I just couldn't believe it." Two years after contaminated drugs linked to a compounding pharmacy in Massachusetts killed 64 and... |
At the Comprehensive Cancer Center Vienna of the Medical University of Vienna and the Vienna General Hospital interdisciplinary research collaboration with a focus on translational thoracic oncology has been in place for some years. In addition to lung cancer, the main focus is on pleural mesothelioma (pleural cancer). Michael Grusch from the Institute for Cancer Research at the MedUni Vienna says: "Until recently, pleural mesothelioma was regarded as a rare disease. Unfortunately, this is changing now. One of the main causes triggering the disease is asbestos. The long incubation period for this disease means that the damage done 20, 30 years ago is just coming to light now. A reputable study predicts that, by 2029, 250,000 people will die of pleural cancer in Europe." Says thoracic surgeon Mir Alireza Hoda: "We are very struck by the fact that we are increasingly seeing younger patients between 30 and 50 years old. Earlier it mainly affected people over 65." Pleural mesothelioma is treated with a combination of chemotherapy, surgery and radiotherapy. Says Hoda: "Our goal is to find markers for mesothelioma and to develop personalized approaches to treatment. There still aren’t any but they would help us to select the right treatments for the patients affected." This could have a decisive impact on improving the success of treatment as, at present, the average survival rate after diagnosis is nine to twelve months. The... |
| The Supreme Court on Wednesday pondered when the working day ends for hourly employees at an Amazon.com warehouse: when the worker punches the time clock, or later, when he clears a security check to make sure he hasn’t stolen anything. Several justices seemed to think it was the former. But others seemed sympathetic to a lawsuit filed by workers at a Nevada facility arguing that enduring the wait to go through security — up to 25 minutes, according to those who filed the suit — was part of the job, and they should be paid for it. The implications are great: there are more than a dozen class-action suits filed against Amazon and others who believe security checks are necessary to make sure none of their inventory walks out with the workers. A win could open the way for hundreds of millions of dollars in pay. Paul D. Clement, representing Integrity Staffing Solutions, a company that supplies workers for Amazon.com, said waiting to go through a security check is a “classic” example of the kind of activity, like commuting, for which courts have said employers do not have to pay. Going through security is not “integral and indispensable” to the job for which a worker is hired. Justice Elena Kagan was not convinced, especially at companies where a tight control over their warehouses is essential. “I mean, what makes it Amazon?” Kagan asked Clement. “It’s a system of inventory control that betters everybody else in the... |
| Workers who fill customer orders for Internet retailer Amazon might be out of luck in their quest to be paid for time they spend going through security checkpoints each day. Several Supreme Court justices expressed doubts Wednesday during arguments over whether federal law entitles workers to compensation for security measures to prevent employee theft. The case is being watched closely by business groups concerned that employers could be liable for billions of dollars in retroactive pay for security check procedures that have become routine in retail and other industries. Workers have battled for decades with employers over what tasks they should or shouldn't be paid for. The Supreme Court has previously ruled that workers must be paid for time putting on protective gear for work, but not for time waiting to take it off. And the court has found that butchers deserve to be paid for time sharpening their knives, which are essential to working at a meatpacking plant. The latest dispute involves two former workers at a Nevada warehouse who say their employer, Integrity Staffing Solutions, Inc., made them to wait up to 25 minutes in security lines at the end of every shift. Integrity provides staffers for Amazon warehouses. Amazon spokeswoman Kelly Cheeseman says the company's data shows that warehouse employees walk through security screenings "with little or no wait." A federal appeals court ruled last year that the workers, Jesse Busk and Laurie Castro,... |