News Briefs: Week of Feb. 21-25

This roundup includes the following news briefs:

Family medicine departments within U.S. medical schools are urged to apply for the Pfizer/AAFP Foundation Visiting Professorship Program in Family Medicine.

Six institutions will be awarded $7,500 each to invite a prominent physician-scientist of their choice for three days of teaching and interaction during the 2011-12 academic year. The guest faculty may give lectures and participate in rounds, seminars and conferences.

Awards are intended to cover the visiting professor's honorarium, travel expenses and other direct expenses incurred by the host institution for program activities.

Application forms and more information are available online. The deadline to submit applications has been extended to March 18.

Upsher-Smith Laboratories Inc. is recalling 16 lots of warfarin sodium, which the company markets as Jantoven, and more than a dozen lots of six other products: amantadine, amlodipine, baclofen, bethanechol, oxybutynin and fluoxymesterone, which the firm markets as Androxy.

Upsher-Smith initially recalled one lot of Jantoven on Feb. 16 because a single bottle of the anticoagulant labeled as 3-mg tablets was found to contain 10-mg tablets. The company said in its recall notice that substituting 10-mg warfarin for 3-mg warfarin could lead to excessive anticoagulation and life-threatening hemorrhage.

On Feb. 18, the company expanded the recall to include other products packaged on the same manufacturing line. The complete list of recalled products is available online.

The National Committee for Quality Assurance, or NCQA, has released new standards for its 2011 patient-centered medical home, or PCMH, recognition program.

According to an NCQA press release, the 2011 PCMH standards emphasize patient feedback and direct practices to provide care with an eye toward patient preferences and needs. The new standards also emphasize enhanced access to care and care-management protocols that include patients and their families.

NCQA also announced that in the second half of 2011, it will release a medical home version of a widely used evaluation and patient experience survey that will allow physician practices to receive additional NCQA distinction by voluntarily reporting patient experience data.

As of Feb. 15, U.S. marshals have seized all lots of Auralgan Otic Solution because the prescription pain reliever has not been approved by the FDA.

The FDA said in a Feb. 16 news release that Auralgan is manufactured for Chapel Hill, N.C.-based Deston Therapeutics by Integrated Commercialization Solutions Inc. in Brooks, Ky. The agency said it warned Deston three times in 2010 that Auralgan was an unapproved new drug, but the company continued distributing the product, which is used to treat pain and inflammation associated with ear infections.

The value of the products seized is estimated to be $16.5 million, the FDA said.