Medical Practice

In rejecting PSA screening for prostate cancer, an influential federal panel has chipped a cornerstone of preventive medicine, declaring that it's not always best to catch cancer as early as possible. "At best, PSA screening may help only 1 man in 1,000 avoid death from prostate cancer," the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force said Monday. "Most prostate cancers found by PSA screening are slow growing, not life threatening, and will not cause a man any harm during his lifetime.

Nicholas DeMaria, Sicklerville's doctor, knows better than just about anyone how quickly the community has grown in the last decade. You see, most of the residents are his patients. "We're at 7,000 and counting," DeMaria said. He opened the practice only four years ago and already bulging files line the reception room of his offices on Williamstown-New Freedom Road in Winslow Township. DeMaria came to Sicklerville, once a quiet farming community, in 1986 after finishing his residency at Cooper Hospital-University Medical Center in Camden.

Talk to the doctor with the thick Brooklyn accent about how best to treat patients, and Scott S. Levy shares his "Nordstrom" approach to medical care. "My concept is, you run a medical practice like Nordstrom. You provide patient service, you try to do what's good for patients," said the new vice president and chief medical officer of Doylestown Hospital. "And if you do that, my feeling is, in the long run it will pay off. You treat patients like they're a customer. " Levy, who specializes in kidneys and hypertension, believes Doylestown Hospital, which is expanding with booming Bucks County, is thriving with that approach to patients.

A 72-year-old Upper Darby physician who pleaded guilty to illegally prescribing drugs to 14 people was sentenced yesterday in Delaware County Court to 15 years of probation. Edward Freedman, who had agreed in a plea bargain in July to give up his medical practice, was also ordered by Judge Clement J. McGovern Jr. to perform 1,000 hours of community service. McGovern suggested that Freedman perform the community service at a drug treatment center. Freedman, who had practiced from his home in the 300 block of Long Lane for 40 years, could have been sentenced to 15 years in prison and fined $250,000 if he had been convicted of felony drug violations.

Philadelphia doctor Ronald S. Brown was sentenced Wednesday to 10 years in prison for giving thousands of people illegal prescriptions for painkillers and tranquilizers in 2008 and 2009. At times, the supposed patients were lined up on the sidewalk outside his Germantown home, from which he illegally prescribed nearly 50,000 doses of OxyContin, Percocet and Xanax, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Pamela Foa. It was the second time Brown, 60, was sentenced for illegally distributing medical drugs.

I urge Gov. Thornburgh to veto the underage-drinking bill because of the improper amendment, by which Sen. Joe Rocks (D., Phila.) is attempting to misuse the "certificate-of-need" process in order to deny women their legal right to abortion by crippling clinics. This would be an abuse of the concept of certificate-of-need, which has been used for the last 10 years by health systems agencies. The procedure is an intricate system of checks and balances that has as its purpose the prevention of too large and duplicative hospital buildings, equipment and services in order to reduce health care costs.

Harold R. Kay, 47, a surgeon and medical professor who pioneered new surgical treatments for heart disease, died yesterday of thyroid cancer at his home in Wynnewood. Though he had been ill for more than four years, Dr. Kay remained active in his medical practice until a month ago. In addition to his medical practice, he was a clinical associate professor of surgery at the University of Pennsylvania. At age 25, he had battled successfully against Hodgkin's disease.

WILMINGTON - Delaware's medical licensing board failed to conduct its own investigation of a suspected pedophile pediatrician 16 years ago after learning that Pennsylvania authorities had been told that he fondled a young patient, according to a report released Monday by the state Attorney General's Office. The fondling allegation was investigated by Pennsylvania licensing officials and Philadelphia police, but no action was taken against Earl Bradley. He was arrested in Delaware in December and is charged with molesting more than 100 of his patients over the last decade.

The first construction in 10 years at Rancocas Hospital in Willingboro began last week with groundbreaking for a 6,000-square-foot expansion to Brachfeld Medical Associates, an internal medicine practice connected with the hospital. Jonas Brachfeld, a founder of the hospital and chairman of its department of internal medicine, said the $1 million project, which will double the 16- physician group's office space, is expected to be completed in six months. The medical practice is the largest affiliated with the hospital, said Mike Lewis, the group's administrator.

The medical license of Kermit B. Gosnell, the West Philadelphia abortion doctor who's been linked to two deaths, has been temporarily suspended in Delaware by that state's Board of Medical Practice. Gosnell's attorney, Michele Allen, and state prosecutors hammered out a consent agreement yesterday in which the 69-year-old physician agreed to the temporary suspension of his state medical license and license to distribute controlled substances, the board said at a meeting later in the day in Dover.

In January 1957, Dr. John B. Flick Jr. cut out of the heart of a 9-year-old girl a bullet that had been lodged there for 17 days. "Doctors said every time her heart beat, the bullet pushed against the wall of the heart," the Evening Bulletin reported. "In time, they said, it would have worn a hole in the muscle. " Thanks to Dr. Flick, the spent bullet became a belated Christmas present for the girl. "He followed up on her a couple of years later, and she was doing fine," Dr. Flick's daughter, Louise, said in an interview.

AS SATURDAY'S funeral for Whitney Houston nears, there's still a fair amount of breaking news: * The Los Angeles County coroner's office has issued subpoenas for medical and pharmacy records from Whitney's doctors and medical providers. Assistant Chief Coroner Ed Winter said that the request is made in virtually all death investigations because such records can shed light on how people died and whether they had any serious medical conditions. "We've already contacted a number of doctors with requests for records," he said.

Gayle Levick Goldglantz, 62, of Elkins Park, a medical-practice manager who endured four kidney transplants in a history-making fight for life, died of cancer at Penn Hospice at Rittenhouse on Sunday, Oct. 16, the day before her 40th wedding anniversary. Mrs. Goldglantz discovered she had kidney disease after a blood test for her marriage license in 1971. "The doctors told us we would have a very bleak future," her husband, Harvey, later told The Inquirer. In 1976 and 1977, Mrs. Goldglantz had two kidney transplants from cadavers; the organs were rejected after one month and one week.

William P. Rumsey, 93, of Wallingford, chief of surgery at Sacred Heart Hospital in Chester in the 1970s, died Friday, July 9, at Crozer-Chester Medical Center. Born in Swarthmore, Dr. Rumsey graduated from Swarthmore High School in 1935, earned a premed bachelor's degree at Pennsylvania State University in 1939, and graduated from Temple University School of Medicine in 1943. A daughter, Joanne Jenkins, said that for much of the remainder of World War II, Dr. Rumsey was an Army surgeon at a military hospital outside London.

Philadelphia doctor Ronald S. Brown was sentenced Wednesday to 10 years in prison for giving thousands of people illegal prescriptions for painkillers and tranquilizers in 2008 and 2009. At times, the supposed patients were lined up on the sidewalk outside his Germantown home, from which he illegally prescribed nearly 50,000 doses of OxyContin, Percocet and Xanax, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Pamela Foa. It was the second time Brown, 60, was sentenced for illegally distributing medical drugs.

Philadelphia doctor Ronald S. Brown was sentenced Wednesday to 10 years in prison for giving thousands of people illegal prescriptions for painkillers and tranquilizers in 2008 and 2009. At times, the supposed patients were lined up on the sidewalk outside his Germantown home, from which he illegally prescribed nearly 50,000 doses of OxyContin, Percocet and Xanax, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Pamela Foa. It was the second time Brown, 60, was sentenced for illegally distributing medical drugs.

WILMINGTON - Delaware's medical licensing board failed to conduct its own investigation of a suspected pedophile pediatrician 16 years ago after learning that Pennsylvania authorities had been told that he fondled a young patient, according to a report released Monday by the state Attorney General's Office. The fondling allegation was investigated by Pennsylvania licensing officials and Philadelphia police, but no action was taken against Earl Bradley. He was arrested in Delaware in December and is charged with molesting more than 100 of his patients over the last decade.

The medical license of Kermit B. Gosnell, the West Philadelphia abortion doctor who's been linked to two deaths, has been temporarily suspended in Delaware by that state's Board of Medical Practice. Gosnell's attorney, Michele Allen, and state prosecutors hammered out a consent agreement yesterday in which the 69-year-old physician agreed to the temporary suspension of his state medical license and license to distribute controlled substances, the board said at a meeting later in the day in Dover.

Henry Scott, 80, of Wyncote, a family physician in Nicetown for almost 40 years, died Thursday at Abington Memorial Hospital of complications from a stroke. While growing up in Nicetown, Dr. Scott worked as a shoe-shine boy at Broad Street and Erie Avenue, and earned enough to give his mother $500 for a down payment on the family's first home. A former sharecropper, she inspired him to become a physician and was encouraging when he eventually returned to Broad and Erie to establish his medical practice, said his son Donald.