A Landmark Decision for Patient Safety and Our Role In It

A week ago, the Florida Supreme Court decided Charles v. Baptist, a medical malpractice case filed by my Father in Duval County (Jacksonville). As is often the case, the result is rightfully credited to an army of skilled lawyers – most of them fronting their time and their money on behalf of a relatively powerless […]

Quality Fraud by Omission

More Than Half of Failed Clinical Trials Unpublished   Less than half of failed clinical trials are published in peer review journals, according to a new study. Practically, this may be due to the fact that there are no sponsors or financial stakeholders willing to contribute to a public relations push when their new ‘wonder […]

Lee Memorial and Quality Fraud

In the last weekly blog, we learned that medical error is the third leading cause of death: “Metrics For A New ‘Patient Centric Safety Movement’”. Since the IOM and Johns-Hopkins studies referenced there, the news has grown worse: The Washington Post now reports medical errors are the third leading cause of death. Quality Fraud is a […]

Metrics For A New ‘Patient-Centric’ Safety Movement

According to the Institute of Medicine in the 1990’s, an estimated 100,000 people died as a result of medical mistakes every year in the U.S. (a number that has more than doubled, according to a new study by Johns Hopkins University). The Institute of Medicine (IOM) is a Congressionally mandated, non-profit research body. Their initial […]

December 20, 2016

An excellent follow up in the New England Journal of Medicine to our weekly blog on quality fraud. Off label drugs are often promoted for uses that are not backed up by any real study or science at all. Like lawyers, don’t pick your medicines off of TV or by word of mouth. Ask medical […]

Quality Fraud Drives Medical Costs

Daraprim was first made available in 1952. It treats toxoplasmosis and cystoisosporiasis, diseases caused by eating undercooked food and other digestive problems – often with no detectable symptoms. Turing Pharma, operated by Martin Shkreli, bought this old drug in August of 2015, immediately jacking up the price of Daraprim from about $13 a pill to […]

Quality Fraud Drives Medical and Insurance Costs Up

In 1999, HHS announced 371 criminal indictments for health care billing fraud, up 61% from the previous year[1]. DOJ convicted 396 Defendants for health care fraud, filed 2,278 civil matters relating to health care fraud and excluded 2,976 providers from billing Federal programs like Medicare and Medicaid as a result of fraud[2]. These cases included […]