Category: A.M. Vitals: J&J’s Plan to Fix Plant Includes 300 Layoffs

MEwens
Also: bad nurses traveling; Boston Scientific’s founders sell shares; research on a universal flu vaccine.
Read more this great post here

Katherine Hobson
Letting in More Light: Johnson & Johnson is disclosing more payments it makes to physicians, reports the WSJ. Building on its  pledge to make public how much it pays docs who work with its pharmaceutical subsidiaries, which can now be found on their websites, the health-products maker will include reporting from its […]

JGrimes
Agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration have been pushing harder to investigate cases of nursing-home staff giving powerful medications to patients without a doctor’s prescription. But if that sounds all well and good, some say it’s just the nub of a more-complicated situation.
Trade groups for nursing homes and hospice-care facilities say “patients have […]

JGrimes
It’s getting close to April Fools Day but we’re told this is no joke: It seems that in a bid to cut down on the spread of infections, some British hospitals have taken to telling visitors and their medical staffs not to sit on the beds of patients.
“We are committed to doing all […]

JGrimes
Here’s a winter storm warning: show up for work during a blizzard or lose your job.
Washington Hospital Center has fired eight more employees who didn’t show up for work during last month’s snowstorms that blanketed DC, the Washington Post reports today. That’s on top of 16 workers who had been previously fired. Three […]

Jacob Goldstein
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger decided last year to allow nurse anesthetists in California to work without a supervising physician. Now two doctors’ groups are challenging the move in court, according to HealthLeaders Media.
The fight centers over 2001 Medicare rules that usually require a doctor to supervise when nurses administer anesthesia, but allow states […]

noreply@blogger.com (RCoffield@fsblaw.com)
When the government announces its latest monthly unemployment report on Friday, it’s a safe bet that the data will include another uptick in the number of health-care jobs.
That’s pretty much a no-brainer considering the health-care sector added 381,000 jobs in 2007 and another 372,000 in 2008, according to the Bureau of Labor […]

JGrimes
Employment growth in the U.S. health-care industry is nothing to write home about, unless you compare it most other sectors in the economy. That performance remained intact in November as the the government reported health-care employment grew by 21,000, even as the nation continued to shed jobs.
Here’s the Bureau of Labor Statistics report […]

JGrimes
The pharmaceutical industry is undergoing big cuts and the U.S. unemployment rate hit its highest mark since April 1983, but the health-care services sector continues to grow, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The health-care industry added an additional 29,000 jobs in October, nearly the same amount it grew in September. In total, […]

JGrimes
A broad trend in technology and health: Taking data from patients, wherever they are, and getting it to doctors and nurses, wherever they are.
As we’ve noted before, lots of big tech companies like Intel, Google and IBM are trying to figure out how to gather data from patients when they’re at home, so […]