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U.S. doctors and hospitals received more than $20 million last year in payments related to AstraZeneca Plc’s diabetes drug Bydureon, more than for any other medication, newly released company disclosures show. Drugmakers spent more than $10 million in 2014 on each of 10 different drugs through cash payments and items of value given to U.S. doctors and hospitals, according to a Bloomberg compilation of the data released Tuesday by a U.S health agency. Three of the drugs with the most doctor payments are diabetes medications, which vie in a crowded market of competing products. ... Jerry Avorn, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, said some of the diabetes drugs linked to bigger payments aren’t the recommended first choices for doctors. (Langreth and Chen, 7/2)

Maryland's hospitals and doctors took in more than $7.6 million in payments for research, speeches and other work from drug and device manufacturers in 2014, according to federal authorities who have been releasing payment data periodically. The money is a share of about $6.5 billion in funds paid to U.S. hospitals from 1,444 companies, data supplied by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services shows. (Cohn, 7/2)

Frustrated by insurance paperwork and then a yearlong effort to have a cash-only medical practice, Dr. Maribel Aviles gave up. For a few years she just did volunteer and missionary work. "I have fallen so many times, and if I died today, I want to be remembered for what I did, not what I lacked," the family physician said. So last year, Aviles picked herself back up and opened one of the first direct primary care practices in Central Florida. (Miller, 7/4)

Kathryn “Kat” Pietila of Macomb Township lost her husband to cancer but wonders if he would have survived if he wasn’t a patient of Dr. Farid Fata, the criminally convicted “cancer doctor” from Oakland Township. ... Pietila, a former Oakland County resident, believes her husband is among the hundreds of victims of Fata, 49, of Oakland Township, who will be sentenced next week after pleading guilty last September to 13 counts of health care fraud, one count of conspiracy and two counts of money laundering. He admitted he prescribed unnecessary and expensive tests and treatments to 553 patients from his Oakland County offices to perpetrate a $34 million fraud of Medicare, officials said. The number of victims is actually higher, the feds say. (Cook, 7/2)