MASSDEVICE ON CALL — California police found a 63-year-old man unconscious and naked on a lounge chair in his yard with what appeared to be a knife handle sticking out of his belly on Sunday.
He had apparently attempted to remove a protruding hernia from his stomach, police told the Glendale News-Press. As the police waited for paramedics to arrive, the man reportedly pulled the butter knife out of his belly and shoved his lit cigarette into the wound.
"Obviously, there is some amount of psychosis going on," Dr. Sam Carvajalsaid, a surgeon at nearby Glendale Adventist Medical Center told the paper. "It is absolutely impossible for someone to fix their own hernia."
The man was taken to Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center and placed on psychiatric hold.
The man’s name was not released.
Edwards Lifesciences gets a reduced valuation from Wells Fargo
Wells Fargo reduced its valuation range for Edwards Lifesciences Corp. (NYSE:EW) to between $86 and $88 from previous estimates of between $102 and $104 this week, Street Insider reported.
Edwards stock continues to sink today, down 1.6 percent to $72.77 in morning trading after closing at $73.98 last night and topping $91 earlier this month.
Wells Fargo maintained its outperform rating on EW stock and called Edwards’ transcatheter aortic valve implantation "the most compelling opportunity in the cardio device space."
GE Healthcare’s X-ray headquarters moves to China
GE Healthcare is transitioning leadership for its X-ray business to Beijing, China, the company announced this week.
"By moving strategic leadership to a new global hub of healthcare innovation, GE X-ray is better positioned to understand and meet the needs of high growth markets, support the Chinese Government’s Primary Care initiative, and enable an entire in-country X-ray business cycle from engineering and development to sales and service," according to a press release.
Report: Customers will pay more for health plans that are customizable
Nearly 50 percent of 1,000 insurance consumers surveyed said they would pay more for health insurance that they can customize to fit their needs, Healthwatch reported.
"We expect more personalized customer service to emerge as a major source of healthcare differentiation, much like other industries today," Russ Nash, who leads Accenture’s U.S. payer business, said in a statement. "The health insurance industry must use insight-driven health to better understand the expectations of its unique customer segments and how to [enhance] customer relationships to impact revenue growth."
Among the things consumers said were most important to their coverage decisions were knowledgeable representatives, convenient service hours, low wait times and a single contact point for resolving issues.