Author: Peter

DrugAbacus ... lets you compare the price the company charges to a price based on value – a price called the "Abacus Price." How does DrugAbacus find the value of a drug? It doesn’t. You do… lets you combine … information in many different ways, based on the idea that a drug’s value can be broken up into its parts.

Walgreens and Greater Than AIDS are teaming up this year to offer free HIV testing in more than 150 cities across the country.....we have helped nearly 20,000 people access free testing. We are pleased to be able to continue to help make it easier for those in the communities that we serve to know their status."

Emphasizing the importance of quality and affordability, the National Association of Chain Drug Stores urged the Senate ....to look to pharmacy in providing accessible, cost-effective preventive health services that can improve care for Medicare patients with chronic conditions.

Imagine a world where access to any health information or services you needed was available at any time through your digital device. We are not there yet, but CVS Health is doing its best to create that world with its new Digital Innovation Lab located in Boston..."We want to change how healthcare is delivered in this country, and digital is at the heart of the transformation."

House and Senate legislators introduced bills...require health plans to cover the growing number of oral chemotherapy pills as favorably as they do intravenous chemotherapy. But an insurance trade group says that as long as drugmakers continue to increase the prices of the oral drugs, parity legislation amounts to a “shell game” that will push up everyone’s premiums.

Teva and Microchips Biotech have announced a partnership..... implanted delivery system that can store hundreds of doses of a drug over the course of months or years.....hope is to increase outcomes for patients with chronic drug therapies.

China has rejected a Gilead Sciences Inc patent application related to its costly hepatitis C drug, a U.S. advocacy group said, adding the move may lead to other countries to consider rejecting patents…..Gilead has drawn fire for the cost of its top-selling drug Sovaldi, priced at $1,000 per pill…..its patents have been challenged in the U.S., India and Europe.

Seventy-three percent of Americans think that the cost of prescription drugs is unreasonable and, of those, 76% blame drug makers……77% percent…cited pharmaceutical industry profits as the biggest contributing factor to pricing and 53% percent say more pricing regulation is needed.

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality is currently funded to the tune of about $440 million… If the House Appropriations Committee has its way, that funding will vanish in FY16. AHRQ supports research…That includes studies on health information technology, patient safety, disease prevention, care management…...

To increase revenues, retail pharmacies must grow their customer base – and increase the quality of customers they attract.....first determine their ideal customers. "If your target audience is ‘everyone’, you don’t have a target audience," ...."In pharmacy [in general], the ideal customer is geriatric [customers], followed by pediatrics.