Author: Peter

The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), the independent agency that advises Congress on the Medicare program, recently released its June 2019 Data Book: Health Care Spending and the Medicare Program...This year’s report provides the latest details about the ongoing disruption of the buy-and-bill market in Medicare Part B. As you will see below:

• Physician offices account for a diminishing share of Part B spending, though absolute spending at these sites continues to grow. 
• Hospital outpatient settings have been crowding out physician offices. Hospital outpatient departments now account for more than 40% of Part B spending—and an even greater share for oncology products...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

New Online Renewal Process
One-Hour Nevada Law CE Requirement

National Pharmacy Compliance News October 2019

• USP Postpones Official Dates of USP General Chapters Revisions and Additions
• FDA Issues Statement on Compounded Bulk Drug Substances Ruling
• HHS, FDA Publish New Action Plan for Importation of Certain Prescription Drugs
• Pain Reliever Misuse Decreased by 11% in 2018, NSDUH Survey Indicates
• Additional Efforts Needed to Improve Naloxone Access, CDC Say
• Altaire Pharmaceuticals Recalls Multiple OTC Ophthalmic Products

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Business struggles, significant debt and legal liabilities put some industry players at particularly high risk of declaring bankruptcy in the near future, including large drugmakers like Teva Pharmaceutical and Bausch Health as well as small biotechs including Clovis Oncology and Puma Biotechnology...A BioPharma Dive analysis identified 31 troubled biopharma companies that are at highest risk of going bankrupt in the next 12 months...While rare in the drug industry, bankruptcy filings have ticked up in 2019, driven by growing legal, political and market pressures that could bring more companies to zero...READ MORE

The U.S. government is barring federal dollars meant for opioid addiction treatment to be used on medical marijuana...The move is aimed at states that allow marijuana for medical uses, particularly those letting patients with opioid addiction use pot as a treatment, said Dr. Elinore McCance-Katz, whose federal agency doles out money to states for treatment programs...“There’s zero evidence for that,” McCance-Katz said. “We felt that it was time to make it clear we did not want individuals receiving funds for treatment services to be exposed to marijuana and somehow given the impression that it’s a treatment.”...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.

OxyContin is a dying business in the United States. Purdue Pharma, owned by the billionaire Sackler family, is collapsing under an avalanche of lawsuits that accuse the company of using false claims to push its blockbuster painkiller in the U.S., profiting as an unsuspecting nation slipped into a devastating drug crisis...Meanwhile, another company owned by the family in China has been promoting OxyContin with the same tactics Purdue was forced to abandon...the Sacklers’ Chinese affiliate, Mundipharma, tell doctors that time-release painkillers like OxyContin are less addictive than other opioids...Mundipharma has pushed ever larger doses of opioids…In China, Mundipharma managers tried to boost profits by requiring sales representatives to copy patients’ private medical records without consent, in apparent violation of Chinese law...As in the U.S., marketing materials in China made claims about OxyContin’s safety and effectiveness based on company-funded studies and outdated data that has been debunked...READ MORE

Martin Shkreli, the disgraced former CEO of Retrophin currently serving a seven-year sentence for securities fraud and conspiracy, was hoping for a SCOTUS Hail Mary after multiple appeals fell flat. Turns out the court wasn't interested in hearing Shkreli's pleas at all...The U.S. Supreme Court...denied hearing Shkreli's appeal to overturn his 2017 fraud conviction after his disastrous run as head of biotech Retrophin. Shkreli was also forced to forfeit $7.36 million in his conviction...READ MORE

The world can’t stop talking about biopharma’s scientific achievements, but the discussion often avoids the industry’s biggest potential buzzkill: a shortage of properly trained workers to manufacture these new drugs...As more new therapies are approved and the industry ramps up facility capacity, biopharma needs to have a properly trained workforce in place...Traditional training methods are one-dimensional and simply not producing biopharma workers who can “hit the plant floor running.” With help from academia, the biopharma industry is at long last beginning to address this problem and subsequently rethink workforce training — but is this paradigm shift happening fast enough to keep pace with biopharma’s progress?...READ MORE

The Trump administration estimates it will release rules on drug prices and information blocking this month but punted finalizing a rule on interoperability until as late as 2022..The White House Office of Management and Budget released...the unified regulatory agenda for fall 2019...The agenda said that a major rule that would outlaw information blocking among providers is estimated to be released this month...The unified agenda also gives an update on key regulations addressing high drug prices...One such proposal is a demonstration model that would tie the price of physician-administered drugs paid by Medicare Part B to an index made up of cheaper prices paid by other countries...The agenda also provides an estimated release date of January 2020 for a proposed rule to allow the importation of drugs from Canada. The proposed rule would create a pilot project to allow states, wholesalers and pharmacists to import drugs from Canada at a cheaper price than in the U.S...READ MORE