Insights

<p>What does it take for a doctor to lose his license in Arkansas?</p> <p><a href="http://www.armedicalboard.org/public/verify/results.aspx?strPHIDNO=ASMB…. Randeep Singh Mann</a> appears to have pushed the envelope just about as far as it can go, and he is still holding an active medical license from that state.</p> <p>Mann, an internist in Russellville, is accused of <a href="http://www.justice.gov/usao/are/news_releases/PDFs_2010News_Releases/Ja…; the head of the Arkansas State Medical Board by planting a bomb in his driveway.</p>

<p>The '<strong>Public Health Awareness</strong>' segment will be a recurring feature here on the Pulse + Signal blog where we highlight relevant public health focused observances (e.g. cancer awareness, heart disease awareness, etc). The purpose of this feature is to continue to spread the word around specific health awareness dates to spur increased understanding and prevention.</p>

<p>Health care reform, and the ideological, political and public health battles that surrounded it, reached a fever pitch in the media by the time the legislation reached the House of Representatives in March. Many members of ReportingonHealth were watching and chronicling these events closely. Here, a cross-section of reporters discusses their experience working on these complex stories.</p>

<p><em>Cross posted, with permission, from <a href="http://www.reportingonhealth.org/users/marylou">Mary Lou Fulton's</a> blog <a href="http://mediaoptimist.wordpress.com/">The Media Optimist</a>:</em></p>

<p>One doctor allowed her clinics in Santa Ana, California, to be used as front operations for selling highly addictive painkillers.</p> <p>Another doctor agreed to be paid $2,000 a month for the use of his registration with the DEA so that the front operations could keep up their supply.</p> <p>Another doctor was willing to rent his registration for half that.</p> <p>All of them were caught red-handed by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. Medical Board of California investigations are not made public, but, so far, none of them have been disciplined in California.</p>

<p>Devoted readers of Antidote's <em>Doctors Behaving Badly</em> posts might get the impression that all doctors have trouble cutting straight, prescribing properly or keeping their hands out of their patients' underwear.</p> <p>Of course, these doctors are a small, but pungent, sore on an otherwise healthy body of professionals working diligently help cure what ails us. I received an email this week that proved to me just how small the world of dangerous doctors is.</p> <p>It was within minutes of my sending out a <em>Doctors Behaving Badly</em> about Dr. Gary W. Hall in Phoenix.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/ref/opinion/CHBLOW-BIO.html">Charles M. Blow</a> documents that President Obama's sales job for the health care reform law has so far resulted in his lowest approval ratings on health care (34%) since taking office. Blow writes that: "This underscores the current fight for the soul of this country. It's not just a tug of war between left and right. It's a struggle between the mind and the heart, between evidence and emotions, between reason and anger, between what we know and what we believe."</p>

<p>A quick heads up on some health data now available from the U.S. Department Veterans Affairs, pulled from the innards of a just released (and lengthy)&nbsp; <a href="http://www4.va.gov/OPEN/docs/open_govt_plan.pdf">"open government" report</a>. This should be of interest to journalists who have a V.A. medical facility in their community. (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Veterans_Affairs_medical_facilitie… a list</a> of V.A. medical facilities in the United States.)</p><p>From the report:</p>

<p>Here's something a doctor should hope to never hear after performing surgery:</p> <p>"Doc, my eye feels like mayonnaise."</p> <p>That was the assessment of an 81-year-old patient operated on by Dr. Gary W. Hall, a Phoenix ophthalmologist.</p> <p>The patient had cataracts in both eyes, but her vis

<p>When word hit the grapevine that the <a href="../../../../../../../../blogs/shadow-practice-part-5-drug-pushers-running-clinic-were-far-saints">Madre Maria Ines Teresa Health Center</a> in Santa Ana had prescription painkillers for the asking, the place couldn't keep them in stock.</p>