Author: Peter

Until CMS publishes...regulations, all providers and developers can do is hold tight – but the clock keeps ticking...in a real bind....anxiously waiting for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to release final rule changes to meaningful use regulations...all hospitals and eligible providers would be able to attest to 90 consecutive days of meaningful use for 2015 only, instead of an entire year.

Institute for Safe Medicine Practices....outlined safe practices for certain error-prone medications.."One thing I’d love to see pharmacists do more of is…not just educating patients about the drug, but also how to use the drug safely...and make follow-up calls to patients," …."I don’t think [pharmacists] do that enough."The following high-alert medications are considered safe and effective treatments, but their potential for error could cause serious harm:

1. Warfarin
2. Enoxaparin (Lovenox)
3. Fentanyl patch
4. Methotrexate (Trexall)
5. Hydrocodone and acetaminophen
6. Oxycodone and acetaminophen
7. Insulin lispro (Humalog) and insulin aspart (NovoLog)
8. Insulin glargine (Lantus)
9. Insulin glusine (Apidra)
10. Insulin detemir (Levemir)

Teva Pharmaceuticals is in advanced talks to buy the generic drug division of Allergan for about $45 billion, a person briefed on the matter said on Saturday...A deal could be announced as soon as Monday, this person said, though talks are continuing and may still fall apart....

New York State Attorney General…announced that a Walgreens-owned pharmacy (Trinity Homecare) must repay $22.4 million to the state’s Medicaid program for filing false billings...

Teva…will acquire Allergan's global generic pharmaceuticals business…. legacy Actavis global generics business, including... international generic commercial units, third-party supplier Medis, global generic manufacturing operations, the global generic R&D unit, the international over-the-counter commercial unit….and some established international brands...

biosimilars….pharmacists will soon have new factors to consider when selecting and dispensing ….potential interchangeability…allowing it to be substituted for the reference biologic at the point of dispensing without the prescriber’s involvement… biosimilars …are ideal candidates for pharmacist substitution akin to generics...

Pharmacy automation provider TCGRx has released the ATP 2, a next-generation automated tablet packaging system….enables pharmacies to run leaner…by reducing labor and operating costs…system provides continuous operation while focusing on redundancy and uptime…

collection of biological codes sits in a library at UNLV…focus is learning how the codes can help cells fight off HIV…work can be used to develop drugs much faster…second would be to apply the codes to a variety of other diseases and understand how the affected cells work… Lastly…would be to create personalized drugs for people by figuring out their own genetic codes.

Sam Stolpe, PharmD, senior director of Quality Strategies and Business Development at Pharmacy Quality Alliance (PQA),...Pharmacy Times Perspectives...video editorial series featuring in-depth reports

federal judge says…a clinic chief (Tonya Rushing) connected to the largest medical office hepatitis C outbreak in Nevada history will pay $50,000 in restitution to overbilled insurers and companies, not $2.2 million prosecutors sought… U.S. Attorney…the $50,000 was intended to be credited toward a final amount yet to be determined.