Crime perpetrated by healthcare professionals is increasingly pervasive in today‘s hospitals and other healthcare settings. Patients, coworkers, and employers are vulnerable to exploitation, fraud, abuse, and even murder. Investigative journalist Kelly M. Pyrek interviews experts who provide accounts concerning the range of criminality lurking in t

PRESCRIPTION DRUGS ARE THE THIRD LEADING CAUSE OF DEATH AFTER HEART DISEASE AND CANCER. In his latest ground-breaking book, Peter C Gotzsche exposes the pharmaceutical industries and their charade of fraudulent behaviour, both in research and marketing where the morally repugnant disregard for human lives is the norm. He convincingly draws close co

Over the past couple of decades, individuals have come to rely more on home health care visits for their health care needs. While there have been decreases in hospital stays and in the percentage of older persons living in nursing homes the consequence has been the emergence of a new type of occupational crime: home health care abuse. In considering offending in the home health care industry, it is important to focus on crimes by and against home health care professionals. This book is one of the first to fully address abuses occurring in the home health care industry. Its intent is not to suggest that home health care is a dangerous field for workers and consumers; rather, the intent is to shed some light on the types of misconduct found in home health care. Each chapter will include a wealth of examples to illustrate that these incidents actually are real, devastating, and significant. At the end of each chapter the reader will find a series of discussion questions designed to encourage the reader to reflect back on the content of the chapter through the eyes of those involved in the response to home health care fraud. Also included are Web site addresses where readers can learn more about the offenses and other resources to help demonstrate ways to deal with the problem. It is intended for criminal justice officials, health care professionals, academics, and researchers who want to better understand the nature of offending in the home health care industry. It is also intended for use in criminal justice, sociology, and white-collar crime courses exploring crime in the workplace as well as courses examining the home health care field. Chapters include: Home, Home on the Range: Where Health Care is Provided and Crimes are Committed; Home Health Care Professionals as Victims and Witnesses; Crimes by Home Health Professionals: Violence, Theft, and Deception; Responding to Crime in the Home Health Care Field: Strategies, Obstacles, and Issues; and Preventing Home Health Care Misconduct.

Pharmaceutical medicine is very, very big business. The top ten players earned more than $200 billion in 2003. One drug, Pfizer's cholesterol pill Lipitor, had sales of more than $9 billion. This kind of money buys an awful lot of friends among doctors and politicians. Most of those involved in the formulation of public health policy seems happy with the present system. The trouble is that the public is starting to have doubts. There is a growing sense that the vast profits of drug companies and their control of the research agenda might not be that good for our health. Jacky Law takes the reader on a journey through the pharmaceutical business and shows how the public is quite right to be concerned about conventional medicine, as it has developed since the late 1970s. She tells a story of spectacular regulatory failure, phenomenally high prices, betrayal of the public interest and a growing awareness among ordinary people that things could be very different. Sophisticated marketing and public relations, not scientific excellence, have helped corporations to preside unchallenged over matters of life and death. It is time, Law argues, for us to take responsibility for our health, not as passive consumers of pharmaceutical medicine, but as informed citizens.

US - Forensics, Law & Homeland Security.

In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.