(Reuters) — With painstaking effort, a group of Chicago hospitals has managed to cut by half the number of infections caused by an especially deadly type of superbug. Now U.S. health officials want that kind of campaign to go national.
(Reuters) – The White House is due to issue an ambitious plan to slow the growing and deadly problem of antibiotic resistance over the next 5 years, 1 that requires massive investments and policy changes from a broad array of U.S. government health agencies, according to a copy of the report reviewed by Reuters.
(Reuters) — Dr. Margaret Hamburg, who as commissioner of the FDA for almost 6 years has overseen public health initiatives ranging from tobacco control and food safety to personalized medicine and drug approvals, is stepping down, the agency said today.
(Reuters) — The U.S. House of Representatives added another notch to its lengthy record of Obamacare repeal votes yesterday by approving a measure that would scrap the healthcare law and direct oversight committees to come up with a replacement.
(Reuters) – The Obama administration on Friday proposed a plan to move most doctors, hospitals and their patients to national standards for handling electronic clinical data by the end of 2017.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), as part of an effort to propel the $2.9 trillion U.S. healthcare system away from a costly fee-for-service system, released a report draft aimed at establishing an inter operable health information technology system that can be accessed by patients and their healthcare providers.
The U.S. Senate yesterday approved an omnibus, $1.012 trillion budget bill that includes the restoration of some $85 million in user fees from medical device and pharmaceutical companies that was held in abeyance by sequestration.
President Barack Obama, who has until midnight tomorrow to sign the measure into law, is expected to quickly add his signature after the 72-26 vote in the Upper Chamber.
The medical device industry this week may have received the strongest argument yet for repealing the 2.3% medical device excise tax.
MASSDEVICE ON CALL — When former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney was fitted in 2007 with an implanted defibrillator, doctors ordered the manufacturer to shut off the device’s wireless communication capacities, out of fear that the device may be vulnerable to cyber-attack.
In a 60 Minutes interview published over the weekend, Cheney’s cardiologist Dr. Jonathan Reiner said that the was aware of cybersecurity concerns with medical devices and that he felt it was necessary to protect the prominent public figure from malicious hackers.
Washington was a hive of activity again over the weekend and into yesterday, as legislators worked to hash out a deal to re-open the federal government and raise the debt ceiling.
But a proposed delay of the the medical device tax that’s part of Obamacare is reportedly dead in the water, after Senate Democrats rejected a plan by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) that would have seen the levy put off for 2 years.
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