2019 - Pharmacist Digest

Gender-affirming surgeries tripled in the U.S. between 2016-2019, study finds

STAT

AUGUST 23, 2023

nearly tripled between 2016 and 2019, according to new national estimates from a cohort study in JAMA Network Open. The number of gender-affirming surgeries taking place in the U.S.

STAT+: Wyden claims Pfizer used a ‘colossal’ scheme to avoid paying billions in U.S. taxes

STAT

MARCH 27, 2025

customers six years ago, but did not report any profits from those sales on its 2019 tax returns because all of the income was supposedly earned offshore, according to an investigation by the Democratic staff of the Senate Finance Committee. In what one U.S. for 2018 and 2020.

Pharmaceutical Companies

Pharmaceutical Companies Pharmaceutical Companies

STAT+: Vida Ventures brings in new leaders after co-founders’ departure

STAT

APRIL 2, 2025

Kim and Jail have both been with Vida since 2019 and previously worked with Belldegrun at Kite Pharma. Cohen will steer public market investing — a first for the firm — while Goodman will work on creating and financing private startups. They join Helen Kim and Rajul Jain on the firm’s leadership team.

More than 31,000 ARRS staff recruited since 2019

The Pharmacist

OCTOBER 18, 2023

More than 31,000 staff – including pharmacists, mental health practitioners and social prescribers – have been recruited to work in general practice under the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme (ARRS) since 2019.

STAT+: AI versus AI: The emerging arms race over health insurance denials

STAT

DECEMBER 12, 2024

The software engineer’s disillusionment began in 2019, when her insurer, UnitedHealthcare, balked at covering physical therapy after she was hit by a car and could not walk. Like many Americans, Holden Karau said she was fed up with health insurance.

STAT+: As Medicare spending on remote patient monitoring jumps, HHS watchdog warns of fraud, misuse

STAT

SEPTEMBER 23, 2024

In just four years from the beginning of 2019 through 2022, according to the report, the number of Medicare patients receiving RPM increased tenfold, from 55,000 to 570,000. Remote patient monitoring has exploded since the pandemic. Medicare Advantage use increased 14 times over. Medicare Advantage use increased 14 times over.

Youth vaping continues its tumble from a Juul-fueled high

STAT

SEPTEMBER 5, 2024

Around 6% of middle and high school students used vapes in 2024, down from 8% last year, and a record high of 20% in 2019, according to a survey released Thursday by the FDA and the CDC. The number of U.S. The vape brand Juul fueled this surge, but has since receded in popularity after FDA actions and legal challenges.

Opinion: Independent doctors like me are becoming an endangered species

STAT

FEBRUARY 15, 2024

More than 100,000 doctors have left private practice and become employees of hospitals and other corporate entities since 2019. Today, nearly three in four physicians are employees of larger health care entities or other corporations — a record high.

Hospitals

STAT+: SEC charges former CEO of pain relief device company with $41 million fraud

STAT

DECEMBER 20, 2023

Laura Perryman led Stimwave, which sold nerve stimulation devices to combat pain, from 2010 to 2019, when the fraud came to light. The Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday charged the former CEO of Stimwave, a company that sold devices containing dummy pieces of plastic, with defrauding investors out of $41 million.

STAT+: A rare disease program, portrayed as both lifeline and pharma handout, is set to expire

STAT

SEPTEMBER 12, 2024

After his son Michael was diagnosed with a devastating, ultra-rare disease in 2019, Terry Pirovolakis dedicated himself to eradicating it. Pirovolakis, a Canadian IT director, recruited academics and raised $3 million to design a gene therapy.

STAT+: Former medical device CEO who sold dummy, plastic parts convicted of fraud

STAT

MARCH 7, 2024

Laura Perryman led Stimwave, which sold nerve stimulation devices to combat pain, from 2010 to 2019. STAT published new details about the Stimwave story in May, after former employees described how Perryman broke into Stimwave’s Florida headquarters to steal back devices after her termination in 2019.

There’s a knowledge gap about miscarriages in the U.S., and researchers hope to close it

STAT

AUGUST 21, 2024

Megan Hanson was eight weeks pregnant in 2019 when she experienced a miscarriage — her sixth consecutive loss in as many years. It felt particularly cruel after a second IVF transfer.

Denied by AI: How Medicare Advantage plans use algorithms to cut off care for seniors in need

STAT

MARCH 13, 2023

Meanwhile, medical notes in June 2019 showed Walter’s pain was maxing out the scales and that she could not dress herself, go to the bathroom, or even push a walker without help. Read the rest…

Nursing Homes

Routine vaccinations drop among U.S. kindergartners for the third year in a row

STAT

JANUARY 12, 2023

Vaccinations among children remain high, but the trend — with coverage dropping from about 95% in the 2019-2020 school year to 94% in 2020-2021 to 93% in 2021-2022, according to the data released Thursday — has health officials concerned. The percentage of U.S.

Vaccines

BREAKING: Pharmacy contract negotiations to start 'early in the new year'

The Pharmacist

DECEMBER 18, 2024

Contractors in England are currently working under the terms of a contractual framework agreed in 2019, that expired in March this year. Negotiations for the community pharmacy contract in England will not begin until next year, pharmacy minister Stephen Kinnock has confirmed.

Community Pharmacies

Nurses and health care support workers at higher risk of suicide, study finds

STAT

SEPTEMBER 26, 2023

million employed people (both within the health care field and outside) observed from 2008 to 2019. While other research has examined the incidence of mental health issues and suicide risk among physicians, the same isn’t necessarily true of other health care professions.

Is the future of AI in health care just a lot of hype?

STAT

OCTOBER 10, 2024

Narayan, a professor of computer science at Princeton University, went viral in 2019 for a talk he gave at MIT on how to recognize overblown declarations about AI’s capabilities. Now he’s teamed up with his Ph.D. student Kapoor to publish the book “ AI Snake Oil ,” which came out Sep.

Drug Development

Drug Development Hospitals

Juul’s internal playbook opens a rare window into influence in Washington

STAT

FEBRUARY 15, 2024

WASHINGTON — A new trove of internal emails and other documents from the e-cigarette maker Juul reveals the company’s extensive behind-the-scenes efforts to promote its interests in Washington — a rare insight into the otherwise opaque methods corporations use to influence the government.

Documentation

STAT+: Gilead’s chief medical officer to leave as R&D efforts stall

STAT

JULY 17, 2024

Merdad Parsey, who joined Gilead in 2019, will stay in his post until the first quarter of next year as the company looks for a successor, Gilead said in a press release Wednesday. Gilead has faced multiple setbacks in its attempt to move away from its stronghold in virology and into other areas like cancer.

New analysis reveals postpartum sterilization rates are higher among U.S. women with sickle cell

STAT

OCTOBER 1, 2024

Performed by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, the study found that between 2012 and 2019, 8.8% . Now, a data analysis commissioned by STAT shows that the rate of postpartum sterilization is significantly higher in Americans with sickle cell disease than in those without. of births to unaffected mothers did.

STAT+: After early wins, CRISPR gene editing is about to get a lot harder

STAT

SEPTEMBER 21, 2022

The short history of CRISPR gene editing in humans has, with rare exception, been a history of triumphant progress: A patient apparently cured of sickle cell in 2019, six patients with toxic DNA knocked out of their liver last year, another six patients with a different strand of toxic liver DNA knocked out last week.

STAT+: Addiction treatment center founder indicted in sprawling fraud scheme

STAT

MAY 24, 2023

Over the last few years, Daniel Cleggett Jr. appeared to be living a charmed life.

Gates Foundation to fund trial of long-awaited new tuberculosis vaccine candidate

STAT

JUNE 28, 2023

The 26,000-person, Phase 3 study, set to begin next year, will test a vaccine known as M72/AS01 that showed promising results from a smaller trial in 2019. The Gates Foundation unveiled plans Wednesday to fund a long-awaited trial for what, if proven effective, would be the first new tuberculosis vaccine in over a century.

Vaccines

STAT+: U.S. drug shortages have reached a decade high and are lasting longer, too

STAT

JUNE 4, 2024

This was also the highest rate of product discontinuations since 2019. These low prices also translated into more product discontinuations, which rose by 40% from 2022 to 2023, and from 100 drugs to 140 during that time. Continue to STAT+ to read the full story…

Second-generation mosquito nets prevented 13 million malaria cases in large pilot programs

STAT

APRIL 17, 2024

Results shared this week by the New Nets Project, an initiative funded by Unitaid and the Global Fund, highlighted a pair of second-generation bed nets tested in endemic areas between 2019 and 2022.

Latest UKHSA figures show rise in both antibiotic use and resistance

The Pharmacist

NOVEMBER 20, 2024

year-on-year in 2023 and prescribing levels are now in line with those seen in 2019, according to national surveillance data published by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA). Antibiotic use rose by 2.4%

Cannabis industry scales back its lobbying in Washington

STAT

AUGUST 1, 2023

Curaleaf, one the largest cannabis companies in the world, spent nearly 40% less on lobbying in the first half of 2023 than it did at its peak in 2019. Together, their spending on advocacy has dipped by more than 50% since 2019, back when federal weed lobbying was at its height. Read the rest…

STAT+: Former medical device CEO who sold fake plastic parts sentenced to 6 years in prison

STAT

JUNE 17, 2024

Perryman led the company from 2010 to 2019. Stimwave was thus able to sell their devices for more money. From 2017 to 2020, the company sold nearly 8,000 devices with the fake component. “Laura Perryman callously created a dummy medical device component and told doctors to implant it into patients,” said U.S.

STAT+: Just how much money do drugmakers gain from patent extensions?

STAT

SEPTEMBER 26, 2023

The organization looked at four blockbuster drugs — Humira, Avastin, Rituxan, and Lantus — that had biosimilars launched between 2019 and 2023. years of unchallenged market presence.

Drug Pricing

Drug Pricing Biosimilars Drug Development

STAT+: Jiankui He, creator of CRISPR-edited children, relocates to a Chinese medical tourism hub

STAT

JULY 24, 2024

In January 2019, provincial health authorities found that He’s human CRISPR experiments violated national regulations against gene-editing for reproductive purposes.

STAT+: New antibiotics were underprescribed for hard-to-treat infections, study finds

STAT

APRIL 19, 2024

hospitals and then tracked usage of seven antibiotics that were approved by the Food and Drug Administration between 2014 and 2019. They examined data spanning January 2016 through June 2021 at 619 U.S. Continue to STAT+ to read the full story…

Hospitals

Esketamine tops quetiapine for treatment-resistant depression in head-to-head trial

STAT

OCTOBER 4, 2023

Research dating back to the early 2000s has shown that ketamine and esketamine — which is derived from ketamine — are effective in cases of so-called treatment-resistant depression, and the nasal spray version of the drug was specifically approved for this indication in 2019. Read the rest…

Opinion: Is the golden age of biotech stocks over?

STAT

JANUARY 10, 2023

The Food and Drug Administration approved 378 new drugs between 2010 and 2019, a big chunk of which were cancer medicines. Biotechnology companies played a big role in developing many of these new treatments, and their successes could partly be seen in the stock market, where biotech stocks soared.

Drug Development

STAT+: Oncologists more likely to provide low-value care after receiving pharma money, study finds

STAT

OCTOBER 25, 2023

The researchers examined Medicare beneficiaries who were diagnosed with cancer and received treatment from 2014 through 2019. Overall, the proportion of patients who were prescribed so-called low-value drugs was higher when their oncologist accepted industry payments, according to the study, published in the BMJ.

Chemotherapy

Chemotherapy Pharmaceutical Companies Pharmaceutical Companies

STAT+: U.S. Supreme Court asks solicitor general for views on controversial Oklahoma law for regulating PBMs

STAT

OCTOBER 8, 2024

The law, which was enacted in 2019, was designed to ensure that pharmacy benefit managers maintain access to a large number of pharmacies and do not steer patients to favored outlets, among other things.

Lead aprons not necessary for patients during X-rays, says largest U.S. dental group

STAT

FEBRUARY 2, 2024

In 2019, the American Associations of Physicists in Medicine concluded that the use of patient lead aprons should be discontinued as they were both unnecessary for safety and had the potential to jeopardize the quality of images. Other medical organizations have been making similar points for some time.

STAT+: Contributors to psychiatry’s bible, the DSM-5, got $14 million from industry

STAT

JANUARY 10, 2024

This latest revision, known as the DSM-5-TR, was prepared between 2016 and 2019, and published in 2022. -based physicians who helped assemble a recent revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which is often referred to as the bible of psychiatry.

Pharmaceutical Companies

Pharmaceutical Companies Pharmaceutical Companies

STAT+: Gene therapy makers wonder if they can make a profit in Europe. Patients fear being left behind — again

STAT

OCTOBER 4, 2023

A company called Bluebird Bio won European approval in 2019 for a gene therapy for thalassemia, a cutting-edge medicine that involves delivering a healthy copy of the gene that’s mutated in patients directly into their cells. A few years ago, the chance for a post-thalassemia life seemed within reach.

Drug Pricing

STAT+: Brain biopsies on ‘vulnerable’ patients at Mount Sinai set off alarm bells at FDA, documents show

STAT

MAY 1, 2024

” What Bauman couldn’t have known was that roughly one year earlier, the Mount Sinai brain biopsies had set off alarm bells at the Food and Drug Administration, whose review had been triggered when a device manufacturer wrote to the agency in April 2019.

Documentation

Documentation Nursing Homes

A STAT Investigation: Embedded Bias

STAT

SEPTEMBER 3, 2024

You know that part of “Little Women” (2019) when Jo says “I can’t believe that childhood is over,” while collapsed on the ground at her sister’s feet? Want to stay on top of health news? Sign up to get our Morning Rounds newsletter in your inbox. Good morning!

Drug Development

STAT+: Chick-fil-A drops a ‘No Antibiotic Ever’ pledge on chicken over supply issues

STAT

MARCH 25, 2024

a decade after the chain announced it would implement a “No Antibiotics Ever” policy by 2019. The change will occur this spring at the slightly more than 3,000 Chick-fil-A locations around the U.S, The move comes amid changes by key suppliers.

Labelling

STAT+: CommonSpirit’s answer to losing money: get bigger

STAT

SEPTEMBER 25, 2023

Formed through a 2019 merger and headquartered in Chicago, CommonSpirit is one of the country’s largest not-for-profit health systems, with north of 140 hospitals. CommonSpirit Health keeps adding more hospitals — and billions in new debt — even as it bleeds money. billion on operations in the past two years.

Hospitals

STAT+: As regulators play catch up with AI, tech startups say uncertainty is slowing them down

STAT

FEBRUARY 20, 2024

The regulatory uncertainty adds to the many challenges dogging young health tech ventures today: Last year investments in digital health startups shriveled to their lowest annual total since 2019, and leaders are desperate to preserve what little funds they have, including through layoffs. Continue to STAT+ to read the full story…

Documentation

Opinion: STAT+: 3 keys to successful biopharma-academia drug development collaborations

STAT

MARCH 31, 2023

Indeed, academic inventors or founders contributed to more than one-quarter of all medicines approved from 2001 through 2019. Academia can be an excellent source of novel drug targets and new technologies that can enhance medicinal discovery. Yet many sponsored research collaborations that hope to tap into academia fail.

Drug Development

Gender-affirming surgeries tripled in the U.S. between 2016-2019, study finds

STAT+: Wyden claims Pfizer used a ‘colossal’ scheme to avoid paying billions in U.S. taxes

Trending Sources

STAT+: Vida Ventures brings in new leaders after co-founders’ departure

More than 31,000 ARRS staff recruited since 2019

STAT+: AI versus AI: The emerging arms race over health insurance denials

STAT+: As Medicare spending on remote patient monitoring jumps, HHS watchdog warns of fraud, misuse

Youth vaping continues its tumble from a Juul-fueled high

Opinion: Independent doctors like me are becoming an endangered species

STAT+: SEC charges former CEO of pain relief device company with $41 million fraud

STAT+: A rare disease program, portrayed as both lifeline and pharma handout, is set to expire

STAT+: Former medical device CEO who sold dummy, plastic parts convicted of fraud

There’s a knowledge gap about miscarriages in the U.S., and researchers hope to close it

Denied by AI: How Medicare Advantage plans use algorithms to cut off care for seniors in need

Routine vaccinations drop among U.S. kindergartners for the third year in a row

BREAKING: Pharmacy contract negotiations to start 'early in the new year'

Nurses and health care support workers at higher risk of suicide, study finds

Is the future of AI in health care just a lot of hype?

Juul’s internal playbook opens a rare window into influence in Washington

STAT+: Gilead’s chief medical officer to leave as R&D efforts stall

New analysis reveals postpartum sterilization rates are higher among U.S. women with sickle cell

STAT+: After early wins, CRISPR gene editing is about to get a lot harder

STAT+: Addiction treatment center founder indicted in sprawling fraud scheme

Gates Foundation to fund trial of long-awaited new tuberculosis vaccine candidate

STAT+: U.S. drug shortages have reached a decade high and are lasting longer, too

Second-generation mosquito nets prevented 13 million malaria cases in large pilot programs

Latest UKHSA figures show rise in both antibiotic use and resistance

Cannabis industry scales back its lobbying in Washington

STAT+: Former medical device CEO who sold fake plastic parts sentenced to 6 years in prison

STAT+: Just how much money do drugmakers gain from patent extensions?

STAT+: Jiankui He, creator of CRISPR-edited children, relocates to a Chinese medical tourism hub

STAT+: New antibiotics were underprescribed for hard-to-treat infections, study finds

Esketamine tops quetiapine for treatment-resistant depression in head-to-head trial

Opinion: Is the golden age of biotech stocks over?

STAT+: Oncologists more likely to provide low-value care after receiving pharma money, study finds

STAT+: U.S. Supreme Court asks solicitor general for views on controversial Oklahoma law for regulating PBMs

Lead aprons not necessary for patients during X-rays, says largest U.S. dental group

STAT+: Contributors to psychiatry’s bible, the DSM-5, got $14 million from industry

STAT+: Gene therapy makers wonder if they can make a profit in Europe. Patients fear being left behind — again

STAT+: Brain biopsies on ‘vulnerable’ patients at Mount Sinai set off alarm bells at FDA, documents show

A STAT Investigation: Embedded Bias

STAT+: Chick-fil-A drops a ‘No Antibiotic Ever’ pledge on chicken over supply issues

STAT+: CommonSpirit’s answer to losing money: get bigger

STAT+: As regulators play catch up with AI, tech startups say uncertainty is slowing them down

Opinion: STAT+: 3 keys to successful biopharma-academia drug development collaborations

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