boston globe

In late 2009, I posted about problems at a Genzyme plant that manufactured some fabulously expensive drugs, e.g.

Cerezyme whose cost to patients approximated $160,000 a year. We thought then that for a drug costing that much, the company ought to have figured out a conservative process to provide pure and unadulterated product.

A combined investigative reporting effort by Pro Publica, partnering with the Boston Globe, Consumers Reports, the Chicago Tribune, National Public Radio, the Public Broadcasting System on seven major pharmaceutical companies' payments to doctors who make speeches on the companies' behalf has gotten a lot of press.  It inspired several separate reviews by news organizations in Colorado, 

A year ago, I posted about leadership and governance problems at Northeast Health Systems, a small hospital system located in neighboring Massachusetts.  The colorful story included leaders who solicited money from the community but concealed what they were doing from the same community, an adolescent pregnancy pact after the hospital system refused to provide confidential birth control information at the high school clinic it ran, a hospital vice-president accused of art theft, various c

In late 2009, we posted about problems at a Genzyme plant that manufactured some fabulously expensive drugs, e.g.

Cerezyme whose cost to patients approximated $160,000 a year. We thought then that for a drug costing that much, the company ought to have figured out a conservative process to provide pure and unadulterated product.

Two articles, one in the New York Times by Duff Wilson, the other in the Boston Globe by Liz Kowalczyk, brought the issue of the conflicts of interest generated by leaders in academic medicine sitting on the boards of health care corporations to wide attention.  The news was that Partners Healthcare, the large hospital network that includes two of Harvard Unive

In June, 2009, an article in the Boston Globe described how the Boston area based biotechnology company Genzyme sold some astonishlingly expensive drugs, using

In Defense of Psychiatric Diagnoses and Treatments

From today's Boston Globe,

Tufts University has withdrawn an invitation for a top aide to US Senator Charles E.

Grassley to give the keynote speech at a conference on conflicts of interest in medicine and research, leading one conference organizer to pull out and question the university's commitment to academic freedom.

The Boston Globe just published a series of investigative reports about a case that illustrates what went wrong with last 20 years' paradigm of health care reform.

Remember how business-like management and competition were going to control health care costs (while improving quality and access)?

We just discussed how the incredible scrutiny being given to the case of Bernard Madoff, the alleged author of the financial scandal of the century, has opened many windows on the mismanagement and misgovernance of health care organizations.

For example, consider the attention given to a Madoff crony, one Robert Jaffe. The Boston Globe reported,