Industry - Health latest news

NEW YORK, NY (MARKET WIRE) Despite a decline in the number of Web sites advertising or selling controlled prescription drugs, like OxyContin and Valium, Xanax and Vicodin, and Ritalin and Adderall, in the past year, 85 percent of Web sites selling such drugs do not require a prescription, according to "'You've Got Drugs!' V: Prescription Drug Pushers on the Internet," the fifth annual White Paper on this subject released by The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University.

SAN JOSE, CA (MARKET WIRE) Following Medi-Cal, which added in-office hysteroscopic sterilization as a covered benefit in May, the State office of Family Planning today announced that its Family PACT program will also cover the revolutionary procedure. The vast majority of health insurance plans now cover hysteroscopic sterilization, allowing indigent women to avoid traditional surgical hysterectomies that come with the dangers of general anesthesia, 2-3 days of post-operative discomfort, and time away from work and family.

Trinity Hunt Partners, a Dallas-based private equity firm, has bought St. Louis-based Castlewood Treatment Center, an acute eating disorder treatment services facility, the firm said Wednesday.

Could a failed Lipitor study help Vytorin? It shouldn't.

The New York state Department of Health has issued its first annual report on hospital infections, with good news and bad news.

ALEXANDRIA, VA and ST. PAUL, MN (MARKET WIRE) The co-CEOs of SureScripts-RxHub, J.P. Little and Rick Ratliff, released the following statement today after the U.S. Senate passed a bill to give Medicare the ability to reward physicians for acquiring and using electronic prescribing or "e-prescribing" technology as a replacement for paper prescriptions. Offering financial incentives to physicians who e-prescribe is widely viewed as a critical step towards increasing the technology's adoption and day to day use. The bill is now headed to the president for signature.

Doctors will get help paying off their medical-school student loans in exchange for agreeing to practice in rural communities under a new program of the Colorado Health Foundation.

Pinnacle Partners in Medicine has added 13 anesthesiologists in Dallas to its network of about 770 anesthesiologists and certified registered nurse anesthetists nationwide, the company said Wednesday.