Academy Comments on ACOs
The American Academy of Neurology, officially commenting on Medicare's proposed rules for accountable care organizations, told federal agencies that neurologists should be free to participate in ACOs or stay out of them without risking the loss of patients. In letters that included the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Federal Trade Commission, the academy argued that patients under ACO care should retain the right to see physicians of their choice. The letters also called for quality measures that would “ensure patients receive benefits of disease guidelines.” ACOs are to offer health care providers financial incentives to coordinate care and improve quality, but the proposed rules have generated critical letters from several of the nation's major medical organizations.
Headache Claim Causes Pain
UCB pleaded guilty to promoting off-label uses of its epilepsy drug Keppra (levetiracetam) and will pay more than $34 million toward criminal and civil liability, according to the Justice Department. The U.S. subsidiary of a Belgian company admitted making and disseminating posters indicating that levetiracetam is safe and effective against migraines, although its own studies had failed to prove such effectiveness. The penalties also cover promotions that prompted prescriptions for pain, bipolar disorder, mood disorders, and anxiety.
One Billion Deal With Disabilities
More than 1 billion people have some form of disability, according to the first-ever World Report on Disability issued by the World Health Organization and the World Bank. People who have mental and physical disabilities are twice as likely as are others to say they lack health care because available providers' skills are inadequate. They are three times as likely to report being denied needed health care, according to the report. In a forward, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, who lives with motor neuron disease, said, “We have a moral duty to remove the barriers to participation for people with disabilities, and to invest sufficient funding and expertise to unlock their vast potential.” The report encouraged governments to step up their efforts to make services accessible to people who have disabilities.
Groups Introduce Mobile Apps
The American Academy of Neurology has launched an iPad application for its journal Neurology that “makes it that much easier to quickly access the latest cutting-edge clinical research Neurology publishes each week,” Dr. Robert A. Gross, editor-in-chief of the journal, said in an announcement. The app offers “a printlike reading experience with article-sharing features, multimedia links, and other benefits,” according to the announcement. Also in June, the Multiple Sclerosis Association of America introduced an iPhone-iPad app, called My MS Manager, designed to help people with multiple sclerosis manage their disease. The app can log activities and generate reports that can be shared with physicians.
Clot Buster Underused
Although the use of tissue plasminogen activator has increased, still only a fraction of eligible Americans are receiving the clot-busting therapy, researchers at the University of Cincinnati found. Dr. Opeolu Adeoye and his colleagues used 2005-2009 Medicare and pharmacy records showing whether TPA was administered to people suffering acute ischemic strokes. In 2005, 1%-1.4% of those patients were given the Food and Drug Administration–approved clot buster, and 4 years later, 3%-3.4% were recorded as having received the drug. When the authors adjusted for potential billing errors, they concluded that as many as 5% of eligible patients were getting TPA in 2009. That still means that only 23,800 – 36,000 of the 700,000 Americans who had an ischemic stroke got TPA that year. The study was published in the journal Stroke.