Highlights of the important and the interesting from the world of healthcare:Massachusetts nurses strike on tap? After a near-miss of a lengthy nurses strike in Minnesota, some nurses in Massachusetts are close to getting into the act. The union representing North Adams Regional Hospital has voted in favor of going on strike, though negotiations are [...]

Highlights of the important and the interesting from the world of healthcare:Troubled nurses skip from state to state. Nurse Craig Peske was fired from a hospital in Wausau, Wisconsin, in 2007 after stealing the powerful painkiller Dilaudid. Six months later, Peske was charged with six felony counts of narcotic possession at a hospital 1,200 [...]

Highlights of the important and the interesting from the world of healthcare:Is venture capital just a three-state game? It was in the second quarter, according to data from the always-insightful research firm CB Insights. A whopping 70 percent of all funding went to just three states–California, Massachusetts and New York, with California taking half of [...]

Could Avandia be the drug industry’s ReGen?The New York Times reported Tuesday that for over a decade, GlaxoSmithKline hid the results of its own study that showed its diabetes drug Avandia “provided clear signs that it was riskier to the heart.”The Food and Drug Administration ultimately approved Avandia. But in 2007, a doctor at the [...]

Highlights of the important and the interesting from the world of healthcare:iPhone videochat a “game-changing tool” for doctors: Two doctors participated in what may be the first documented medical consultation conducted via the iPhone’s new FaceTime video chat function. An Arizona surgeon and a California counterpart used the application to discuss a patient who had [...]

Highlights of the important and the interesting from the world of healthcare:FDA panel to consider pulling Avandia. An expert panel of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is planning a mid-July meeting to consider whether GlaxoSmithKline’s (NYSE: GSK) diabetes drug Avandia should be pulled from the market. Dr. Steven Nissen of the Cleveland Clinic [...]

Highlights of the important and the interesting from the world of healthcare:Wellpoint suffers third security glitch of last 3.5 years: A security glitch at a WellPoint website may have publicly exposed the medical records and credit card numbers of about 470,000 customers, the third such breach the Indianapolis-based health insurer has reported in the last [...]

A large clinical study of whether GlaxoSmithKline’s Avandia diabetes drug is harmful to the heart has raised more questions than it answered. The study — sponsored by Glaxo — found that the drug does not raise heart attack risk, however, it does raise heart failure and bone fracture risks.