Author: Peter

This Week in Managed Care...Cate Douglass with The American Journal of Managed Care.

The School of Medicine has a new name: We now are the University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine. The Health Sciences Committee of the Nevada System of Higher Education Board of Regents on June 10 approved a proposal from the school for the new name to be effective July 1, 2016...This name change can be viewed in a range of ways. It is, on one hand, a minor change, a one-word addition of "Reno" to our long-held name of "University of Nevada School of Medicine" that simply reflects our increasing engagement with the University of Nevada, Reno, the Reno/Sparks metropolitan area and Northern Nevada. On the other hand, it signals the stunning and positive changes that are taking place as we build a full clinical and research campus in Reno in collaboration with Renown Health, the Sierra Nevada VA Health System, community physicians and other partners...Our new name marks, more than anything, a rededication to our purpose of serving our community in partnership with the University, hospitals, health care agencies, physicians and many others...

Worldwide, less than half of Type 2 diabetes patients are taking their medicines in an "optimal" manner, according to a new report, leaving plenty of room for improvement for stakeholders seeking to reduce the billions of dollars associated with poor drug adherence...the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics said "sub-optimal" drug adherence is resulting in a "significant economic and societal burden" plus "avoidable" disease complications for patients...less than 40% of patients around the world are fully complying with their treatment instructions...ready to listen to the suggestions are health officials who've been seeking ways to pay for new, groundbreaking medicines without breaking the bank. Cutting down on avoidable costs would seem to make an approachable target in that effort...

President Barack Obama today declared in a special issue of JAMA that the Affordable Care Act has worked, both by driving down the share of Americans without health coverage and by "transforming healthcare payment systems," that are improving quality and reining in spending...The president’s article, "United States Health Care Reform: Progress to Date and Next Steps," highlights what he sees as the achievements of the signature law often called "Obamacare," while calling for more work to cut prescription drug prices and fill gaps where market competition is lacking, perhaps with a "public option."..."Americans can now count on access to health coverage throughout their lives, and the federal government has an array of tools to bring the rise of healthcare costs under control," Obama writes. "However, the work toward a high-quality, affordable healthcare system is not over."

Mike Glaicar, Business Development: Pharmacy Times...(PTNN) This weekly video program provides our readers with an in-depth review of the latest news, product approvals, FDA rulings and more.

Henderson Hospital is hiring this month to fill hundreds of vacant positions as it prepares for its planned fall debut...The hospital has posted 240 open positions and is expected to add more...The 142-bed Valley Health System property is to debut on or near Oct. 31 in Union Village, a developing health, recreational and residential complex at Galleria Drive and U.S. Highway 95...Henderson Hospital, which has filled about 40 positions so far, is seeking nurses for departments including surgical services, women’s services and the emergency department at job fairs this month, according to a news release...

Two sides of one coin will keep diabetes drug sales growing--big time--through 2025. The disease is growing fast around the world, and treatment arbiters advise a more aggressive approach to blood-sugar control...Combine those two drivers, and diabetes will account for almost $60 billion in 2025 sales across 9 major global markets, GlobalData analysts say in a recent report...But this rising tide of sales won’t lift all treatments equally...Best positioned for growth? GLP-1 drugs, they say, which are poised to grow by 12.4% annually through the next decade...Right now, only a small number of patients are actually hitting blood glucose targets of 7% to 7.5% A1C levels...Doctors are pushing harder to hit those goals, so the number of people needing a second or third add-on drug will mushroom over the next 10 years. "[W]e’ll treat these people fairly aggressively" to get to those A1C levels..."[W]e are not going to tolerate people after 8.5% and 9% like we used to."...despite public health campaigns and awareness campaigns, people will "continue to overeat and under-exercise and they are going to see their weight continue to go up, and therefore their need for more medications will go up with it,"...

...the reason a pharmacy prepares a specific concentration of an i.v. or oral liquid medication has little to do with clinical or patient safety considerations...the pharmacy staff follows standard recipes because "they've always done it that way," said Pasko, director of ASHP's Center on Medication Safety and Quality and principal investigator for ASHP's Standardize 4 Safety campaign...Pasko hopes the campaign will change that mindset and result in consistency, at the national level, in how i.v. and oral liquid admixtures are formulated for patient use..."We're really trying to emphasize to everyone that this is a patient safety effort,"..."We're putting patients at risk every day when we dispense a different concentration than what someone else does."...Standardize 4 Safety has put together an interprofessional panel of experts to propose voluntary, evidence-based standardized concentrations for 32 i.v. medications associated with a high risk of patient harm due to dosage errors...ASHP has urged pharmacists to get involved with the Standardize 4 Safety community through its online communication platform on ASHP Connect...

I’ll respectfully disagree: Healthcare "Ubers" are already proliferating and will ultimately reshape 21st-century medicine. The more aspects of healthcare we can shift from relationship to transaction, the better life will be for patients and doctors alike..."Uber for X, Y or Z" means "making something easy and convenient." But Uber is also about safety, reliability, and civility...Uber’s true essence is this: It accumulates a vast amount of information on the micro-details of cities; overlays that information with real-time data on prospective drivers, riders, and road conditions; reduces staggeringly complex decision trees to algorithms; and instantly presents drivers with a manageable number of highly intuitive options. It thus obliterates the learning curves and fixed costs that such information previously demanded...Uber establishes, digitizes, and stores relationships to make transactions possible...To shift some (not all) of healthcare from relationship to transaction, we’ll have to imitate what Uber did: Accumulate vast databases of population health care information. Develop better and more comprehensive telemetry for real-time tracking. Apply artificial intelligence to discern patterns no intuitive physician can see and to narrow down treatment options. And package this information for instant comprehension by patients and providers...some aspects of healthcare will be impervious to Uber-like innovation...As we convert more and more of medicine to transactions—and we will—patients will find it easier to tend to their health, and doctors will find themselves freer to focus on those areas where relationships are truly irreplaceable...

As the center of gravity shifts in the life sciences, Merck is reorganizing its R&D teams by closing one facility, eliminating about 360 jobs from three sites, and transferring other employees to a pair of new facilities that are slated to open on opposite sides of the country...planned changes affect drug discovery, preclinical, and early development work. As a result, the company is closing a facility in North Wales, Pa...Merck is cutting jobs in Kenilworth and Rahway, N.J... less than 10 percent of roughly 3,600 people in early-stage R&D work at these three locations will lose their jobs...Merck later this year expects to open new labs at its Cambridge, Mass., location, which will focus on emerging sciences, including the role of the microbiome in disease. The company also plans to open a new research site in the San Francisco Bay area to focus on cardiometabolic disease and oncology...