Louisiana AG looks into 215 Katrina deaths
USA TODAY
NEW ORLEANS -- A state investigation into whether critically ill patients were left to die or were euthanized at a New Orleans hospital during the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is part of a probe into an estimated 215 deaths at nursing homes and hospitals across the area, according to the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals. The Louisiana attorney general's office, which is overseeing the inquiry, has launched a "monumental investigation" that is examining what happened to patients and residents at 19 hospitals and nursing homes.
Leaders worry destruction may
extend New Orleans' brain drain
Macon Telegraph
NEW ORLEANS -- Joe Ann Clark, the executive director of the Louisiana State Nurses Association, said she gets recruiting calls every day from hospitals across the country desperate to hire away as many of New Orleans' roughly 13,000 displaced nurses as they can. With the nation facing a nursing shortage, Clark is struggling to keep nurses in the state so they can return to work if and when the decimated health-care system is rebuilt. But it's not been easy. One California hospital is offering $42 an hour and a $13,000 signing bonus, she said. "My gracious," said Clark, a retired nurse. "It's hard to compete with that."
Nurses Offered Refresher Courses
Area colleges trying to address shortage
San Gabriel Valley Tribune
WHITTIER -- Rio Hondo College has joined four other Los Angeles-area colleges to offer self-paced "refresher courses" for former nurses trying to get back into the profession. The courses are part of Rio Hondo's overall effort to address the state's critical nursing shortage, described by the California Employment Development Department as among the worst in the United States. The EDD predicts an estimated 97,500 job openings for registered nurses by 2010.
Nursing Staff Shortage As Jail Population Rises
Minnesota This Week Newspapers
Dakota County is experiencing a problem of supply versus demand — record numbers of inmates with medical issues and a shortage of nurses to provide care. In August and September, Dakota County Community Services Director Dave Rooney reported inmates have numbered 280-plus, with several days of the census reaching over 300. At the same time, the increasing complexity of inmates’ medical issues and inadequate nursing staffing have left approximately 25 percent of nursing shifts uncovered by budgeted staff hours.
West Virginia Coming To Grips With Nursing Shortage
Charleston Gazette
The latest attempt to address West Virginia’s nursing shortage focuses on a group of students in a high-tech lab at West Virginia State Community and Technical College. As professor Paula Reilley explains basic skills and techniques, students practice on each other or the eight automated dummies in a classroom that features hospital room training simulators — complete with curtains and blood pressure monitors.
Flooded-Out Doctors Find 'A Mess' But Bounce Back
USA Today
Donning boots and a face mask, pediatrician Floyd Buras got inside his medical office building last week for the first time since fleeing Hurricane Katrina. The floodwaters that inundated the office and exam rooms to within a few inches of the ceiling were gone, leaving behind a stinky, slippery layer of muck, Buras says. Sodden paper medical records filled the shelves. Mold covered everything. "It's a mess," says Buras, who had expected as much.
Lawyers Monitoring New Jersey Vioxx Trial
WJLA-TV Washington D.C.
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. -- In the back rows of Courtroom 3A, the well-dressed men and women listen sit quietly — watching jurors' faces, scribbling notes on white legal pads, listening intently to the doctors, scientists and drug company executives who testify in the case of Humeston v. Merck & Co.Some are personal injury lawyers who represent people suing Merck over its painkiller Vioxx, which the company pulled off shelves last year. Some are Wall Street analysts keeping tabs on the case because of its potential impact on Merck's stock. Some are Merck consultants.
Merck Defense in Vioxx Trial Back on Track
The Associated Press
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. -- A Merck & Co. doctor on Tuesday told a jury hearing a lawsuit by a Vioxx user that the drugmaker extensively studied the pain reliever's safety — including its heart safety — both before and after the drug won federal approval in 1999. Dr. Alise Reicin, vice president of clinical research at Merck Research Labs, told the jury that Merck did multiple studies of Vioxx's possible risks, and determined the medicine caused no more cardiovascular risk than dummy pills or other painkillers.
High Court Won't Hear Cheaper Drugs Case
ABC News
WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected an appeal from a generic drug company over the patent for the antidepressant Zoloft, in a case that sought to speed up development of a cheaper substitute. Justices declined without comment to review a lower court judgment for Pfizer Inc., maker of the popular antidepressant. That decision had been a split one, however, with one judge complaining that brand-name drug manufacturers had tried to delay the release of generic drugs. Generic medicines are usually cheaper than the brand names.
Pfizer Takes a Dose Of Bad News This Year
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Pfizer, the world's largest drug company, is having a bad year. A lawsuit filed on Wednesday against Pfizer claiming that it oversold the benefits of its anticholesterol medicine Lipitor is only the latest hurdle facing the company. Its stock is near an eight-year low, as investors nervously await a decision in a patent lawsuit that could open Lipitor, the world's top-selling drug with sales of $11 billion last year, to cheap generic competition as early as 2007 - four years before Pfizer had planned.
