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The role of pharmacy technicians in immunizations has evolved rapidly, particularly over the past 2 years because of COVID-19. Prior to the pandemic, pharmacy technicians for the most part were limited to assisting pharmacists in basic tasks related to immunizations. These included screening patients, preparing for the immunization, and performing administrative tasks required for immunization programs...In 2016, Idaho led the way in expanding the role of pharmacy technicians to include administering immunizations...the results were clear: All pharmacy technicians taking part in the study passed their assessments on the first attempt...The momentum for pharmacy technician-administered immunizations continued in Michigan, Washington state, Rhode Island, Utah, and Nevada...READ MORE

Ill-dissolving capsules can hamper drugs’ effectiveness or render them useless, which is especially concerning when they’re used to treat seriously sick blood disorder patients...Teva Pharmaceuticals ran into just such a problem during routine stability testing of its thrombocythemia drug anagrelide. Thanks to a dissolution test failure—when med takes longer to dissolve once ingested—Teva is recalling one lot of 0.5-mg capsules in the U.S. No other batches are affected, the company added...READ MORE

Former pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli was released from prison on Wednesday after serving most of his seven-year sentence for lying to hedge fund investors and defrauding drug company investors...Shkreli, 39, was released from a prison in Allenwood, Pa., and moved “community confinement,” or a halfway house overseen by the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ New York Residential Reentry Management Office, the AP reported. The bureau said his projected release date is Sept. 14...READ MORE

CVS Health has asked Gov. Phil Scott to veto H.353 — a last-ditch effort to block a bill it says would raise prescription drug costs for Vermonters with private insurance...H.353 started out as a bill to make drugs more affordable by regulating pharmacy benefits managers, third-party companies that negotiate medication coverage plans for consumers with private insurers. But revisions of the bill, as it worked its way through the House and Senate, would have all but guaranteed that specialty drug prescriptions given to patients in health care settings, including expensive cancer medication, would be filled at the University of Vermont Health Network’s pharmacy in Burlington, rather than through cheaper mail-order pharmacies that insurers prefer...READ MORE

The White House announced the launch of the first federally supported test-to-treat site, a part of the White House test-to-treat initiative designed to improve access to COVID-19 antiviral oral medications for certain high-risk patients. In response, ASHP sent a letter to Ashish Jha, the White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator, requesting the administration dramatically expand access to COVID-19 antivirals in all communities by removing the federal barrier preventing pharmacists from initiating therapy with these time-sensitive medications...READ MORE

This week, a federal judge in Greeneville, Tennessee, sentenced seven individuals and seven related corporate entities for their roles in a multimillion-dollar health care fraud scheme...Peter Bolos and his co-conspirators, Michael Palso, Andrew Assad, Scott Roix, Larry Smith, Mihir Taneja, Arun Kapoor and Maikel Bolos...deceived pharmacy benefit managers, such as Express Scripts and CVS Caremark, regarding tens of thousands of prescriptions. The PBMs processed and approved claims for prescription drugs on behalf of insurance companies. Bolos and his co-conspirators defrauded the PBMs into authorizing millions of dollars’ worth of claims that private insurers such as Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee, and public insurers such as Medicaid and TRICARE, paid to pharmacies controlled by the co-conspirators...READ MORE

No one who provides a service does it for free. Professionals administer these services, and payment is expected...Have you heard about the uninsured person who walked into the pharmacy to get their second or third or fourth COVID-19 shot? The billing mechanism for these patients—the Health Resources and Services Administration—is now out of money, and yet we, the pharmacists, are expected to take care of these patients...According to the CDC website,“[The] COVID-19 vaccine is free of charge for everyone. Participating pharmacies will bill private and public insurance for the vaccine administration fee. For uninsured patients, this fee will be reimbursed through the Health Resources and Services Administration’s Provider Relief Fund.”...At least half the patients who come into the pharmacy will ask why we need their insurance card. “These shots are supposed to be free,” they say. I explain to them that it takes at least 15 minutes of our time to administer a shot, and even though the vaccine is “free”—and even the alcohol pads and syringes are “free”—there is still a cost...READ MORE

Jose Maria Fernandez Sousa-Faro, president of European pharmaceuticals giant PharmaMar, has been charged by police with being falsely vaccinated against Covid-19. Dr. Sousa-Faro has been caught up in a scandal in Europe involving people being added to the National Immunization Registry in exchange for large sums of money...Police allege that Sousa-Faro arranged to be injected with a saline solution instead of a Covid-19 vaccination and paid thousands of dollars to have his name added to Spain's immunization register, as confirmed by police sources and reported by El Periodico de Espana...READ MORE

Two drug distributors cannot bring federal civil rights claims against UnitedHealthcare's pharmacy benefit manager Optum unit and an association of state pharmacy boards for allegedly shutting them out of the market by denying accreditation from state boards, a federal appeals court ruled...upheld a lower court judge's dismissal of a lawsuit by distributors PriMed Pharmaceuticals LLC and Oak Drugs Inc against Optum and the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy, finding the defendants could not be sued under the federal civil rights law because they were not state actors...According to the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Newark, PriMed and Oak Drugs, both of which operate in multiple states, were deprived of business because Optum, one of the nation's leading pharmacy benefit managers, requires pharmacies it works with to buy only from distributors accredited by NABP...The distributors said the NABP rejected their applications for accreditation without good reason, violating their due process rights...READ MORE

A Baltimore-based pharmacy and pharmacist have agreed to pay $15,000 in penalty and adhere to “corrective action” in a case that involves allegedly filling dozens of fraudulent prescriptions despite red flags...The United States entered into a consent decree with Ketan K. Dankhara and Falls RX LLC, doing business as Ultra Care Pharmacy Baltimore, which means the case was resolved without Dankhara and the pharmacy admitting guilt...READ MORE