Healthcare Waste Archives - Page 9 of 25

$93M class-action lawsuit filed against City of Calgary for privacy breach

October 5, 2017

The City of Calgary is being sued for $92.9 million, accused of breaching the privacy rights of more than 3,700 of its employees.

The class action lawsuit was filed Tuesday, alleging a privacy breach in June 2016. The court document claims a city staffer sent an email to an employee of another Alberta municipality, sharing the personal and confidential information of 3,716 municipal employees.

The personal information was contained in Workers’ Compensation Board claim details and included medical records, Social Insurance Numbers, addresses, dates of birth, Alberta Health Care numbers and income details.

The statement of claim accuses the city of “acting with the most obvious neglect.”

Purdue Pharma Slammed With Another Lawsuit For ‘Plaguing The Nation’ With Addiction

October 4, 2017

Officials in Tennessee are coming after drug makers, specifically Purdue Pharma, alleging dishonest marketing of their medications hooked the region on opioids.

The district attorneys general for five judicial districts in the eastern portion of the state filed the lawsuit Sept. 29, which focuses on Purdue Pharma, the manufacturers of OxyContin. Jared Effler, district attorney general for Tennessee’s Eighth Judicial District, is spearheading the legal effort for the region, which he says is “one of the hardest-hit areas in the opioid epidemic that is plaguing the nation,” reports Bristol Herald Courier.

Holding Big Pharma Accountable for Opioid Crisis

October 3, 2017

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), every day more than 90 Americans die after overdosing on opioids.

“The misuse of and addiction to opioids, including prescription pain relievers, heroin, and synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, is a serious national crisis that affects public health as well as social and economic welfare,” the NIDA website claims. As well, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that the total economic burden of prescription opioid misuse alone in the United States is $78.5 billion a year, including the costs of healthcare, lost productivity, addiction treatment, and criminal justice involvement.

Fighting the Opioid Epidemic by Targeting Big Pharma’s Bottom Line

October 3, 2017

Opioids now kill over 100 Americans every day. In a single year, opioids kill more Americans than died in the entire Vietnam and Iraq Wars. And while the underground drug trade is fueling this epidemic of medicalized self-destruction, the flow of black-market opioids is inseparable from its above-ground counterpart—the pharmaceutical companies that peddle the legal and FDA-approved pain killers like OxyContin and Vicodin. And now workers on the front lines of this crisis are challenging the nation’s biggest pushers to stop pumping deadly drugs into their neighborhoods.

Potential changes concern pharma companies

October 2, 2017

Proposed changes to the way Canada puts a ceiling on patented drug prices have put pharmaceutical companies on alert, says an Ottawa intellectual property lawyer.

Earlier this summer, Health Canada released a consultation report entitled “Protecting Canadians from Excessive Drug Prices” that included a number of suggested amendments to the federal Patented Medicines Regulations, which are in turn used by the Patented Medicines Prices Review Board to determine the level at which a drug’s price crosses the threshold to become excessive.

Mother demands answers after son, 8, put in restraints and injected on first day of school

September 28, 2017

A Toronto-area mother is searching for answers after she says her son was taken to a hospital alone in the back of a police car, placed in restraints and injected with a sedative because he was acting out on the first day of school.

Debbie Kiroff says her eight-year-old, who loves cooking, Lego and swimming, has behavioural issues and a severe learning disability. So when the principal at Holland Landing Public School phoned her on Sept. 5 to say his behaviour was “escalating,” it didn’t come as a shock.

Shackling and sedating Ontario student ‘disgusting and unacceptable,’ Opposition leader says

September 28, 2017

In a heated exchange in the Ontario Legislature Thursday, the Opposition leader took the Liberal government to task over the treatment of a Toronto-area boy who was restrained and sedated on his first day of school.

Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown said the CBC Toronto story “left a knot in the pit of [his] stomach,” and the actions of the school and hospital are “disgusting and unacceptable.”

Ontario to force pharmaceutical companies to disclose money paid to doctors

September 28, 2017

Ontario is planning to force pharmaceutical companies to divulge their payments to doctors, a major step toward transparency in the otherwise murky world of medical marketing in Canada.

Legislation the Liberals are expected to introduce on Wednesday would make Ontario the first province in which anyone could search a central online database to see if health-care providers or medical organizations have received money from the makers of drugs or medical devices.

Health Canada ‘gutting’ law to detect dangerous medicines, with possible deadly consequences, advocates warn

September 27, 2017

After Vanessa’s Law successfully navigated Parliament and became the law of the land, then Conservative MP Terence Young felt a sense of relief, able to breathe believing he’d finally won his 14-year battle.

Parliament had passed, without a single dissenting vote, a government bill that had started as his own; a bill to protect patients from potentially dangerous prescription drugs – to protect Canadians from suffering the agony his family suffered when his daughter, 15-year-old Vanessa, died of a heart attack after taking a prescribed drug.

But now, almost three years later, Young’s battle continues as a handful of measures he says are critical to the bill’s efficacy have yet to be enacted.

Red more at Global News

Doctors say tax us: Canada is worth it

September 21, 2017

During the past month many doctors have mobilized to oppose the tax changes proposed by the federal government for individuals who are incorporated. We say that the government should move ahead with these plans and go much further in pursuing Canadian economic equity. We recommend that our physician colleagues should resolve their financial issues through negotiations with their ministries of health.

Canada’s poverty rate is 20th out of 31 OECD countries. The Canadian poverty rate went up slightly from 2005 to 2015 to 14.2 per cent, representing 4.8 million people. The child poverty rate was up marginally to 17.1 per cent. Ominously senior’s poverty rates, which had fallen dramatically for two decades, increased from 12 per cent to 14.5 per cent.