Today's Globe: obstetrician suspended, healthcare payments, diabetes monitor, EMS chief, flu in Hong Kong, RNAi company shares, heart scans, drug sales, spinach plant inspections

State medical regulators suspended the license yesterday of Winchester Hospital obstetrician Dr. Suzanne B. Rothchild, who had a trail of serious patient complaints stretching back more than a decade, including a settled malpractice case from 2000 in which it was alleged that she went to lunch at a critical stage of the mother's labor.

To control soaring healthcare costs in Massachusetts, the state needs to overhaul how doctors and hospitals are paid, several healthcare leaders said yesterday during legislative testimony.

In his 35 years with Boston Emergency Medical Services, Rich Serino (left) has helped save an untold number of lives, and has grieved with families when lives were lost. He's dodged bullets while trying to save a child. He's lectured across the United States and in parts of Europe, met with six American presidents, and survived a bout with skin cancer.

Hong Kong's government yesterday ordered all kindergartens and primary schools closed for two weeks amid a flu outbreak. The government has also asked one of its top scientists to study three child deaths over the past week. Yuen Kwok-yung, who helped study Hong Kong's outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, about five years ago, will head a panel of scientists studying the recent deaths. SARS infected 1,755 people in Hong Kong and killed 299.

Echo Therapeutics Inc is developing a novel device that could potentially let diabetics continuously monitor their blood-sugar levels - without having to draw blood. The Franklin company is expected to say today the device passed one of its first key tests, a pilot study with two dozen patients in the intensive-care unit at Tufts Medical Center in Boston.

RXI Pharmaceuticals Corp., one of several companies using RNA interference to develop drugs, began trading as an independent company on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The Worcester company was founded by Nobel laureate Craig Mello of the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

Reversing a proposed decision issued in December, the federal government said yesterday it would continue to cover the use of an increasingly popular procedure to detect heart disease.

Drug sales in the United States grew at their slowest pace since 1961 as cheaper copies of top-selling medicines flooded the market and US regulators approved fewer new products, a report said.

US regulators found "objectionable conditions" in almost half of their inspections of packaged fresh spinach producers and took no "meaningful enforcement action," a congressional report states (sixth item).