Author: Peter

Schenectady County, N.Y., is on track to pay 20 percent less on prescription drugs for its employees this year than in 2003...Flagler County, Fla., expects to save nearly $200,000 in 2017 on brand-name medicines for its 800 workers, thanks to drug costs that have fallen 10 percent since 2016...dozens of cities, counties and school districts have found a solution they say protects their budgets and saves workers money: They are helping employees buy medicines from Canada and overseas, where prices are up to 80 percent cheaper...“We love it. . . . It’s a win-win,” said Anita Stoker, benefits and wellness manager for Flagler County, which has a program enabling its employees to get drugs from pharmacies in Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand...The number of municipalities offering this benefit is growing, even though the Food and Drug Administration considers such drug importation to be illegal and this fall began stepping up enforcement against storefronts advertising the same service. In October it raided nine central Florida locations that helped a mostly senior population order drugs from pharmacies in other countries. Investigators warned the stores’ owners that they were operating illegally and could face fines or jail time...Drugs ordered from overseas often come with the same packaging as in the United States. CanaRx, based in Windsor, Ontario, and ElectRx, based in Detroit, say they vet pharmacies to ensure customers get the real product. Counties, cities and schools, plus an increasing number of private companies, contract with one of these businesses for online service.

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

Walgreens Boots Alliance said Wednesday it would expand its global retail pharmacy operations by taking a 40% stake in Sinopharm Holding Guoda Drugstores Co. Ltd., a subsidiary of China National Accord Medicines Corporation...Sinopharm GuoDa “operates and franchises retail pharmacies across China,” a market that Walgreens CEO Stefano Pessina has said he wants to tap as the companies looks to faster growing and emerging markets to extend its reach...“It is China’s leading pharmacy chain,”,,,Alliance Boots has had a joint venture in China known as Guangzhou Pharmaceuticals, which is a drug wholesaler in China. The joint venture operates pharmacies under a local brand...

Locals in a tiny Irish village where Viagra has been manufactured for 20 years are laughing off potentially stiff competition from Britain...Men in need of the drug will soon be able to purchase the little blue over the counter, following a public consultation by the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency...But villagers from Ringaskiddy, Cork - where Pfizer manufacture a key ingredient used in Viagra - have met the news with amusement...Barmaid Debbie O'Grady told The Sunday Times: 'One whiff and you're stiff. We've been getting the love fumes for years now for free', she told The Daily Telegraph, referring to smoke emanating from one of the factory's chimneys...Ms O'Grady's mother, Sadie, even said that living in Ringaskiddy is a blessing for some men who suffered 'with problems in that department', adding that there is 'something in the air'.

A medical charity that lost a crucial stamp of approval from the U.S. government because it had worked too closely with its drug-company donors said it will decide in January whether it can continue to help patients pay for their prescriptions...the Caring Voice Coalition, one of the biggest patient-assistance charities in the U.S., said it is delaying offering patients financial help for 2018 until it decides what to do...“We are very concerned that we may not be able to remain as a long-term viable resource for individuals with chronic illness,”...the Office of Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services rescinded its favorable advisory opinion of the Caring Voice Coalition, in part because the charity had provided drugmakers with data that could help them see if their contributions were helping their own customers. That could potentially give drug companies greater power to raise prices, the HHS said. It was the first time the HHS has rescinded a favorable advisory opinion for a patient-assistance charity.

Nicole Crisano, PTNN. This weekly video program provides our readers with an in-depth review of the latest news, product approvals, FDA rulings and more.

Nevada health officials on Tuesday said a bill aimed at curtailing opioid overprescription will keep decision-making in the hands of physicians, not lawmakers...The provisions of Assembly Bill 474, which the Legislature passed into law this year and takes effect on New Year’s Day, were explained to about 200 physicians Tuesday evening at a forum at Las Vegas City Hall...Daniel Burkhead, a physician at the Innovative Pain Care Center in Las Vegas, said the law asks doctors to exercise caution...The law mandates that doctors conduct mental health evaluations before issuing first-time opioid prescriptions, which will be limited to 14 days. The law also mandates that doctors register with the state’s Prescription Drug Monitoring Program...“(Lawmakers) did not want to take power out of the hands of physicians,” Burkhead said. “The law wants you to think, before writing that prescription, if this patient provides a high risk of that medication being diverted or abused or misused.”

Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center broke ground Friday on a new five-story addition on its campus in Las Vegas...The two-year, $130 million project was prompted by population growth in Clark County and an influx of patients resulting from the Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act. When completed, the 253,000-square-foot addition to an existing building will include 72 surgery and intensive care patient beds, a new pediatric cardiovascular unit and imaging and laboratory space...It also will add 10 children’s emergency beds and a pharmacy...

Translational Software recently became the latest in a growing number of health IT vendors creating systems to advance precision medicine with its debut of its PGx pediatric platform. Another precision medicine player stepped into the market...with a product designed to be integrated smack dab in the middle of a physician’s clinical workflow. 2bPrecise, a cloud-based precision medicine platform vendor and an Allscripts company, launched a pharmacogenomics (PGx) system to bring crucial data to the clinical workflow...2bPrecise Pgx...makes pharmacogenetic information accessible so physicians can make better informed treatment decisions based on a patient’s unique genetic makeup...The 2bPrecise PGx system plugs into an EHR’s native workflow and can integrate content from Translational Software (a genomic data-based clinical decision support system) and other knowledge sources to enable precision medicine-based decision making at the point of care. 2bPrecise’s PGx system is part of its larger precision medicine platform, built to capture and store genomic data from a range of sources, enabling the harmonization of clinical knowledge and genomic research to extract patient-specific insights.

Southern Nevada and the world watched as Las Vegas hospitals and doctors operated and cared for the wounded on Oct. 1 and subsequent days, and they’re getting high marks for their performance for handling the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history...While 58 were killed — nearly all succumbed to their wounds at the scene of a country music concert on the Strip — more than 500 people were injured, and most passed through nine of Las Vegas’ 14 hospitals. More than 200 went to Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center, and more than 100 went to University Medical Center — the city’s two main trauma centers for handling emergency cases...The hospitals and the medical community are evaluating their performance for a wider report about lessons learned. That information will be disseminated across the country as doctors, nurses and administrators appear at panels in the coming months to share with professionals in their fields...Once hospitals complete their internal review, they will be shared with one another how they responded and what the challenges were...They will look at what they did well and how they would do something differently in the future...Las Vegas will share with the rest of the world the “best practices” it learned from the mass shooting, just like it did after the MGM Grand fire...