Author: Peter

Birth-control delivery services have understandably been on the rise, with each one trying to combine the best medical, financial and legal fit for patients in mobile form. A new app on the scene aims to streamline both process and cost for users by eliminating the pharmaceutical middleman and shipping wholesale medicine direct from its home base to patients' own...The Pill Club is on a mission to make getting birth control as easy and cost-effective as possible, and even fun...founder Nick Chang...these goals are made possible by a fundamental difference between his app and others on the market--namely, that it provides all prescriptions and products in-house, without needing to involve the pharmacies and pharmacy prices that many users are looking to avoid...serving as its own functional pharmacy is what will allow The Pill Club to make the difference for patients who want to acquire birth control but have faced all-too-common hurdles to getting it…I always saw that there were a number of hurdles facing women getting access to birth control. There are structural ones, such as needing to go to the doctor for a prescription, and visiting pharmacies again and again to fill that prescription...what we set out to do: to connect telemedicine with telepharmacy...

There is a new place in town to help women stay on top of their breast health. The Summit Surgery Center at Saint Mary's Galena now houses a one-stop shop for wellness and preventative care...Along with 3-D mammography, "We also have ultrasound technique, MRI, CT scanners. So, this is the area women would come for the preventative diagnostic measures,” explains Medical Director Dr. Shelli Tiller…We want to have preventative medicine for people, but if you get to the point where something goes wrong and you have to go to the surgical side of things - that's where my portion comes in." From biopsies to outpatient surgery....

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

Dutch healthcare technology company Philips said...it had reached deals with New York's Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Utah-based Intermountain Healthcare for them to use its genomics platform for cancer research and treatment...MSK, the world's largest private cancer center, will work with Philips on new methods to use genetic data in the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. Intermountain Healthcare, which runs 22 hospitals and 180 clinics, aims to make its medicine program, which offers individually targeted treatments, available to hospitals worldwide...Philips estimates the connected care and health informatics market will reach a total value of around 70 billion euros in 2019...

In the works for years, a new medical school is finally going to become a reality at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas…The Nevada Legislature gave final approval Monday night to a bill that includes $25 million in state money to build the UNLV School of Medicine…It's been a priority for Gov. Brian Sandoval, who announced earlier Monday he'd received $25 million in matching funds from an anonymous private donor to launch construction…The deal was contingent on the matching funds. Sandoval believes it's the single largest philanthropic contribution in state history…The Senate passed Senate Bill 553 unanimously. Nine Republicans opposed it in the Assembly, where it passed 33-9…Lawmakers also gave final approval to a capital improvements package that includes $43 million for a new engineering building at the University of Nevada, Reno. Sandoval says he'll sign both bills.

Kaléo Pharma's price hikes on the lifesaving overdose med Evzio haven’t only angered lawmakers. A leading pharmacy benefit manager, Express Scripts, is going after the tiny drugmaker for unpaid rebates triggered by the exponential price increases...Express Scripts sued...claiming Kaléo owes it $14.5 million in unpaid rebates. The company’s coverage contract with Kaléo includes two types of rebates, a "formulary rebate" designed to secure coverage and a "price protection rebate" to limit exposure to dramatic price hikes….Kaléo faced Congressional heat earlier this year, when more than 30 senators wrote to the drugmaker seeking information about the drastic price hikes. According to the lawsuit, Kaléo took Evzio’s price from $718 per unit in September 2014 to $4,687 by November 2015...The senators wrote that they were "deeply concerned" about the price hikes that came amid an opioid-abuse epidemic...

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

Gov. Brian Sandoval...vetoed a bill that would have required drug manufacturers to notify the state in advance of planned price increases for diabetes-related drugs, among other provisions...Sandoval said that while Senate Bill 265 had well-intentioned provisions related to access to affordable health care, the measure also contained potentially detrimental consequences for Nevadans, “not the least of which is the possibility that access to critical care will become more expensive, more restricted, and less equitable.”...“SB 265 fails to account for market dynamics that are inextricably linked to health care delivery and access to prescription drugs,” Sandoval said. “This failure cannot be overlooked, and it could cause more harm than good for Nevada’s families.”...Sandoval also said there was insufficient evidence to support the notion that the measure would lead to lower drug costs…

The state of Ohio...sued five major drug manufacturers, accusing them of misrepresenting the risks of prescription opioid painkillers that have fueled a sky-rocketing drug addiction epidemic...The suit, filed by Attorney General Mike DeWine, comes as a growing number of state and local governments are suing drugmakers and distributors, seeking to hold them accountable for a deadly and costly opioid crisis...The five companies Ohio sued were Purdue Pharma LP, Johnson & Johnson's Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc unit, a unit of Endo International Plc, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd's Cephalon unit and Allergan Plc...The suit...seeks to halt deceptive practices, a declaration the companies acted illegally and unspecified damages to the state and consumers...

Federal authorities are investigating dozens of new cases of possible opioid and other drug theft by employees at Veterans Affairs hospitals, a sign the problem isn't going away as more prescriptions disappear...Data...show 36 criminal investigations opened by the VA inspector general's office from Oct. 1 through May 19. It brings the total number of open criminal cases to 108 involving theft or unauthorized drug use. Most of those probes typically lead to criminal charges...Doctors, nurses or pharmacy staff in the VA's network of more than 160 medical centers and 1,000 clinics are suspected of siphoning away controlled substances for their own use or street sale — sometimes to the harm of patients — or drugs simply vanished without explanation...an IT specialist at the VA, says he's heard numerous employee complaints of faulty VA technical systems that track drug inventories, leading to errors and months of delays in identifying when drugs go missing. Prescription drug shipments aren't always fully inventoried when they arrive at a VA facility, he said, making it difficult to determine if a drug was missing upon arrival or stolen later...