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NACDS is welcoming “the strongest signal yet” by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services that a standardized pharmacy quality program should be created...In a new proposed rule, CMS proposed taking action to increase transparency in Medicare Part D plan sponsors’ pharmacy performance measures, NACDS said in a press release Plan sponsors would have to disclose these measures and CMS would publish them, according to the proposal...The CMS rule also recommends principles to guide pharmacy performance measures, urges the industry to work together toward appropriate measures, and indicates the possibility that CMS may incent plans to use appropriate quality measures, NACDS said...READ MORE

The Food and Drug Administration and Federal Trade Commission have drawn a line on anticompetitive practices in the complex biosimilar market...The agencies have announced their intent to enforce false or misleading claims about biosimilars and their reference products. They also plan to educate consumers and doctors about biosimilars…the FDA...released a draft guidance this week, advising the industry how to properly label and promote biosimilars and reference products...The guidance focuses on how biologic and biosimilar labels and promotions should reference the other product. The agency is particularly intent on ensuring that biologic makers don’t suggest their product is safer, more effective or clinically different than its biosimilar...READ MORE

Christina Mattina, welcome to This Week in Managed Care from the Managed Markets News Network

The U.S. will get its first entirely 5G-enabled hospital this week as the Department of Veterans Affairs brings the technology up online at its Palo Alto hospital...The VA's Palo Alto Health Care System, which is an affiliate of Stanford University School of Medicine, will be coming online as also the first 5G-enabled health facility in the world VA Secretary Robert Wilkie said…"What 5G will deliver is richer, more detailed, three-dimensional images of the patient's anatomy with resolution so clear and consistent that it will give us reliable use of important telesurgery services to veterans across the nation," Wilkie said. "That means reliable capacity to allow the VA's best physicians to consult during surgery even when they are not in the same room or halfway across the country."...READ MORE

Finding quality cancer treatment is a life-altering pursuit, but too often financial challenges force patients to decide whether they can afford a potentially life-saving treatment...This month, the State of Ohio Board of Pharmacy changed its policy on drug donations, allowing patients to donate unneeded oral cancer therapy drugs to others fighting cancer. Drugs that were opened and in possession of one patient can now be used to help those in need, reducing waste and cutting costs...Thanks to that policy change, the OSUCCC (Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center)...has created a drug repository program that will provide patients in financial need with drugs donated by patients who no longer require them...READ MORE

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has issued a proposed rule and the Advance Notice Part II to further advance the agency’s efforts to strengthen and modernize the Medicare Advantage and Part D prescription drug programs. These changes would lower the beneficiary cost sharing on more expensive prescription drugs, promote the use of generic medications, and allow beneficiaries to know in advance and compare their out-of-pocket payments for different prescription drugs...The proposed rule would require Part D plans to offer real-time drug price comparison tools to beneficiaries starting January 1, 2022 so that consumers can buy lower-cost alternative therapies under their prescription drug benefit plan...READ MORE

Nicole Grassano, PTNN, Pharmacy Week in Review, this weekly video program provides our readers with an in-depth review of the latest news, product approvals, FDA rulings and more.

The top 1% of opioid prescribers in the U.S. are responsible for 49% of all opioid doses and 27% of all prescriptions, according to a study that suggests efforts to combat overuse of prescription painkillers should concentrate on these heavy prescribers...“We did not know that opioid prescribing was so extraordinarily concentrated in the U.S., well beyond what we see for other medications,”...our study also showed that most U.S. physicians are now prescribing consistent with guidelines (Guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention),” Humphreys said by email. “Taken together, these findings suggest that safer prescribing initiatives can be much more focused on the most prolific prescribers.”...READ MORE

The 2019 novel coronavirus, named 2019-nCoV, continues to dominate headlines as more cases emerge in the United States. As of February 5, the CDC has confirmed 11 positive tests of the virus in US patients...READ MORE

Here is a roundup of the latest coronavirus-related news:

1. Pharmacists are running short on surgical masks due to coronavirus fears, according to a new survey.
2. FDA issues emergency use authorization (EUA) for the first 2019-nCoV diagnostic.
3. Gilead Sciences is donating its experimental antiviral drug remdesivir for clinical trials involving patients with coronavirus in China.
4. Department of Health and Human Services will collaborate with Regeneron to develop treatment.

Walgreens has agreed to pay $7.5 million to settle a consumer protection lawsuit brought by California authorities who said the company employed an unlicensed pharmacist for more than a decade...The action is in response to a complaint filed by the district attorneys of Alameda and Santa Clara counties that alleges Kim Thien Le worked as a pharmacist in multiple Walgreens locations in the Bay Area for more than 10 years though she was not licensed by the Board of Pharmacy...While working as a pharmacist, Le participated in filling more than 745,000 prescriptions, including more than 100,000 for controlled substances,..READ MORE