Managed care is changing the entire business structure of health care as it spreads as a financing mechanism. These changes affect all aspects of medicine, not simply the method of reimbursement. Such changes affect everything from business relationships to clinical practices. As a result, all...

Although Congress has mandated that one federal agency or another confront almost every major health, safety, and environmental risk, the risk management techniques that have been devised appear to be incoherent and inconsistent. A closer look at this morass of federal risk legislation, however,...

Are the drugs in our medicine cabinets too dangerous? The controversy over the link between cyclooxygenase-2 inhibitors and increased cardiac risk and the subsequent release of the Institute of Medicine report on drug safety raised the possibility that hazards may lurk in many widely used...

Neighborhood socioeconomic status (SES), an overall marker of neighborhood conditions, may determine residents’ access to health care, independently of their own individual characteristics. It remains unclear, however, how the distinct settings where individuals seek care vary by neighborhood...

University of the Sciences in Philadelphia convened a symposium to discuss the roles of government, industry, and foundations in funding biomedical research. Government, no longer the largest funder of biomedical research, focuses on basic science. The pharmaceutical industry, now the largest...

Purpose. Results of a survey regarding shortages of injectable oncology drugs in U.S. hospitals and health systems are presented.Methods. An online survey was sent to all members of the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists self-identified as directors of pharmacy. Survey participants...

Along with the potential for breakthroughs in care and prevention, the search for genetic mechanisms underlying the spread and severity of COVID-19 introduces the risk of discrimination against those found to have markers for susceptibility. We propose new legal protections to mitigate gaps in...

When the Medicare program was created in 1965, outpatient prescription drugs were left out of the benefit package, a decision that maintained consistency with standard private insurance plans of the time. Cost was one factor behind the exclusion, but a more fundamental reason related to the role...