December 31st, 2011 by Toni Brayer, M.D. in News, Opinion
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| Kwashiorkor in Niger |
Is it plausible that one small hospital in rural Northern California treated 1,030 cases of Kwashiorkor within a two year period?
Before you answer that, let me explain what Kwashiorkor is. It is a severe form of protein malnutrition…starving to death actually. It is the type of starvation you see in African children. It is so severe that the patient needs special nutritional support including special re-feeding with vitamins and it occurs mainly in children ages 1-4. Adults can starve to death, but they do not develop classic Kwashiorkor.
Medicare pays hospitals a flat rate based on diagnosis codes for patients. Patients with more severe coded illnesses get paid at a much higher rate. Shasta Regional Medical Center, located in Redding, Shasta County, California is under the microscope for billing Medicare (our tax dollars at work) for 1,030 cases of Kwashiorkor to the tune of $11,463 for each diagnosis. This medical center is Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at EverythingHealth*
June 23rd, 2011 by RamonaBatesMD in Uncategorized
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I hope @oracknows, Respectful Insolence, will write more about this. He is much better than I at sussing out fraudulent medical treatments.
I have lived and practiced in Little Rock, AR for over twenty years and I did not know this was in my backyard until my local paper (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette) reported on the outcome of the trial last week. The article title caught my eye as I was skimming the news: Jurors: Cancer therapy a fraud, Award in suit is $2.5 million (subscription only unfortunately).
A federal jury awarded $2.5 million in damages Tuesday to a California woman who paid $6,250 to undergo alternative treatments from a Jacksonville woman who promised a “100 percent success rate” in destroying cancerous breast tumors.
Antonella Carpenter, the former Jacksonville woman who has since moved to Broken Arrow, Okla., and continues to proclaim on her website that she has found a simple, painless way to kill cancerous tumors, wasn’t present for the verdict against her and her company, Lase Med Inc. …….
I don’t recall ever hearing of Lase Med Inc: LIESH Therapy.
The plaintiff in the lawsuit is Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Suture for a Living*
June 3rd, 2011 by ErikDavis in Quackery Exposed, True Stories
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The team of nutritionists at D’avignon Digestive Health Centre on Danforth Avenue in Toronto are an impressive bunch — just consider their qualifications:
- Louise Comtois – CNP, RNCP, Colon Therapist
- Heidi Horowitz – CNP, RNCP, Live Cell Analyst
- Marnie Ryan – CNP, Colon Therapist
- Natasha Audette – RHN, Colon Therapist
- Jane Sloan – CNP, NNCP, RhA
CNP, RNCP, RHN, NNCP. I single out D’avignon only because they came up at the top of my Google search, but the story is consistent across the nutritionist community — there are an awful lot of letters next to the names of practitioners. So what exactly do they all mean? Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Skeptic North » Erik Davis*
April 21st, 2011 by Lucy Hornstein, M.D. in Health Tips, Opinion, Quackery Exposed
3 Comments »
Imagine hearing a commercial on the radio:
Send us money, and we won’t send you anything in return.
No one would do that, right? How about this:
Send us your money and we’ll send you an empty box.
Better? Not much. Now how is that different from:
Send us money and we’ll send you stuff we’ll call medicine that we claim will help you, but there’s no actual active ingredients in it at all.
I don’t think there’s one bit of difference. Wouldn’t you agree that that commercial is fraud, pure and simple? The problem is that the general public doesn’t understand that the word “homeopathic” means “diluted beyond the point where it contains any active ingredients.”
I’ve recently heard commercials for homeopathic vertigo treatments, eye drops for allergies, irritable bowel, and spider veins on legs. I’m tempted to contact the radio station and complain, but stopped short realizing that their first question is going to be, “But is it legal?”
That’s the problem: it is. So what I want to know is, why? Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Musings of a Dinosaur*
March 30th, 2011 by Emergiblog in Health Policy, Opinion
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We hear so much about health care fraud and how much it costs us all in terms of higher Medicaid, Medicare and private insurance costs, and if we could just rein in this fraud we could make our health care system pay for itself.
My trusty Mac widget dictionary defines fraud as:
- a person or thing intended to deceive others, typically by unjustifiably claiming or being credited with accomplishments or qualities and
- wrongful or criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain.
Well, I’m wondering, what is actually considered fraud?
Let me give some examples, and help me understand whether or not this is fraudulent behavior. The examples are purely hypothetical and do not represent any known individuals, living or dead, or specific situations in any known emergency department, living or dead. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Emergiblog*
