Fifteen percent of hospital pharmacists who prepare injectable drugs are going without the the protective masks they typically rely on, or are using substitutes for the masks.
Because of a little-known federal exemption program, death data about heart devices sits in inaccessible FDA files that can take up to two years for the public to see under open-records laws.
The Food and Drug Administration allowed one company to send 50,000 reports of harm or malfunctions to an internal database even as patients worried about faulty defibrillators lodged in their hearts.
After a USA Today Network-Kaiser Health News investigation, Medicare announced last week that it is re-evaluating whether these procedures “pose a significant safety risk” to patients.