Author: Peter

When Insys founder John Kapoor was found guilty on federal racketeering charges...it marked the stiffest conviction yet for an opioid executive at the center of the nation's addiction crisis. Now, a federal judge says prosecutors failed to present enough evidence to support some of those claims—likely lowering Kapoor's sentence...Prosecutors failed to present evidence showing...Subsys to be prescribed to patients for nonmedical purposes...The order did not affect the sales fraud charges on which those executives were convicted as part of a long-running scheme to drive up prescriptions of Subsys by underselling the drug's addictive properties and capitalizing on patient titration...READ MORE

Amazon is jumping into the medication adherence space with a new feature that lets users link up their pharmacy prescription information and, in turn, get reminders about when to take their pills and order refills...The latest feature was born out of a collaboration between the online retail giant and Omnicell, a tech-enabled medication management company. Initially the feature will be rolled out to Giant Eagle Pharmacy customers...this feature will be using “multiple layers of verification” to protect user information, including voice recognition and passcodes...Voice technology is coming onto the healthcare scene in recent years...“Voice has proven to be beneficial for a variety of use cases because it removes barriers, and simplifies daily tasks,”... “We believe this new Alexa feature will help simplify the way people manage their medication by removing the need to continuously think about what medications they’ve taken that day or what they need to take...READ MORE

Nicole Grassano, PTNN, Pharmacy Week in Review, this weekly video program provides our readers with an in-depth review of the latest news, product approvals, FDA rulings and more.

A Florida-based charity will pay $4 million to resolve claims that it acted as a conduit for companies including Biogen Inc and Novartis AG to pay kickbacks to Medicare patients using their high-priced multiple sclerosis drugs, the U.S. Justice Department said...The settlement with the patient assistance charity The Assistance Fund marked the third so far with a foundation linked to an industry-wide probe that has resulted in $850 million in settlements with drugmakers and charities...READ MORE

Gov. Steve Sisolak announced...a new plan for a permanent home for the UNLV School of Medicine that relies on $155 million in donor funds, rather than a $125 million bond measure approved in July...“This agreement is a monumental step forward in ensuring that UNLV will have a state-of-the-art medical school that will save taxpayer money, raise the quality of health care, and help us combat Nevada’s critical doctor shortage in the face of rapid population growth,”...In July, the Nevada System of Higher Education regents authorized acting university President Marta Meana to move forward with a plan to fund the building via $125 million in bonds... a funding resolution was never brought before the Board of Regents...UNLV will be able to use the bonding capacity for another purpose...Before the bond resolution, the school planned to construct a building through a combination of donations and a state grant...READ MORE

Laura Joszt for The American Journal of Managed Care®. Here are the top 5 articles for the month of November.

Read any newspaper and you will be confronted with articles to related to the opioid crisis. Whether the news is highlighting death related to overdoses, over-prescriptions, a medication grey market or doctors sending patients to pill mills, the focus is one: too many opioids are being prescribed and it’s time for pharmacists to take on additional roles in the national fight against opioid addiction and death. Several states have implemented new rules related to a pharmacy’s reporting obligations while other states, such as New York, are taking distribution companies to court...Currently, lawsuits are focusing on drug distributors like RDC and McKesson, which distribute opioid drugs to pharmacies who in turn disseminate those drugs to patients. But from 2017 to the present, several pharmacy owners have been jailed and fined millions of dollars for filling fake prescriptions...READ MORE

China’s National Healthcare Security Administration has announced it has agreed an average 61% cut in prices of 70 top-selling drugs with large pharma manufacturers in exchange for inclusion on a state-run insurance scheme list...the 70 drugs include Roche’s Perjeta, Novartis’ Xolair and the top selling drug in the world AbbVie’s Humira, as well as Eli Lilly and China-based Innovent Biologics’ Tyvyt...The NHSA claims this makes the prices of these drugs the lowest in the world. Also, this agreements means big pharma and their drugs will have greater access to the world’s second largest pharma market because more Chinese citizens in smaller, more remote cities will be able to afford the drugs through their state medical insurance system...READ MORE

Laura Joszt, Managing Editor at The American Journal of Managed Care. Welcome to This Week in Managed Care from the Managed Markets News Network

U.S. President Donald Trump said... he will soon release a plan to let Florida and other states import prescription medicines to combat high drug prices, and he blasted the Democrat-led House for not going far enough in a drug-pricing bill...“We will soon be putting more options on the table,” Trump wrote in a series of tweets, adding that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “and her Do Nothing Democrats drug pricing bill doesn’t do the trick.”...Drug companies have staunchly opposed such a plan, which has been mulled for years but never implemented...READ MORE