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Walgreens and VillageMD...announced a collaboration focused on providing...primary care...VillageMD will operate...clinics next to five Walgreens stores in the Houston area...branded ‘Village Medical at Walgreens,’ will provide comprehensive primary care services, integrated tightly with pharmacists, nurses and social workers to meet the full suite of patient needs...READ MORE

A physician ally of Purdue Pharma LP...has agreed to testify against the OxyContin maker and other drug companies, newly disclosed court records show...Dr. Russell Portenoy, a professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, was an early advocate for the use of opioids for chronic pain...He also was named as a defendant in some of the lawsuits filed by cities, counties and states seeking to hold opioid makers - including Endo and Mallinckrodt Plc...But Portenoy...struck a deal with the plaintiffs to serve as a cooperating witness, the records show. In exchange for his dismissal from the suits, Portenoy provided the plaintiffs with documentation of opioid makers’ payments to him over the years, as well as a 36-page declaration that lays out what he would say on the witness stand...READ MORE

The founder of Insys Therapeutics Inc put profits over patients’ safety by bribing doctors to prescribe an addictive fentanyl spray, fueling the U.S. opioid epidemic, a federal prosecutor said...at the end of a landmark trial...John Kapoor, who served as the drugmaker’s chairman, and four colleagues are the first executives of a painkiller manufacturer to face trial for conduct that authorities say was tied to a drug abuse epidemic that kills tens of thousands of Americans each year...He (Assistant U.S. Attorney Nathaniel Yeager) said Kapoor also sought to defraud insurers into paying for Subsys and carried out the scheme with the help of his co-defendants, former Insys executives and managers Michael Gurry, Richard Simon, Sunrise Lee and Joseph Rowan...All five have pleaded not guilty to racketeering conspiracy...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.

Laura Joszt, Managing Editor at The American Journal of Managed Care. Welcome to This Week in Managed Care from the Managed Markets News Network

Three drugmakers will pay $122.6 million to resolve claims they used charities that help cover Medicare patients’ out-of-pocket drug costs as a way to pay kickbacks aimed at encouraging use of their medications, including some expensive ones...The U.S. Justice Department...said Jazz Pharmaceuticals Plc, Lundbeck A/S and Alexion Pharmaceuticals Inc had become the latest companies to settle claims stemming from an industry-wide probe of drugmakers’ financial support of patient assistance charities...The government has alleged in earlier settlements that drugmakers used such charities as a means to improperly pay the copay obligations of Medicare patients using their drugs in violation of the Anti-Kickback Statute...READ MORE

U.S. companies cannot stop talking about marijuana, hoping in part they can catch investor interest as the booming economy around the drug lifts revenues throughout the supply chain...With the recreational use of cannabis now legal in 10 states and the District of Columbia and medical marijuana legal in 23 states, marijuana is on its way to becoming an $80 billion industry in the United States by 2030...That outsized growth is starting to bleed into adjacent industries ranging from energy to packaging to point-of-sale technology whose products are used in the production or sale of marijuana. As investors circle the cannabis space, supply-chain companies are showing a new willingness to associate themselves with an industry that remained largely illegal a decade ago...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.

Cigna and its Express Scripts pharmacy benefit management unit...said they are rolling out a new program to cap out-of-pocket costs at $25 per 30-day insulin prescriptions for “non-government funded” drug plans...“Through the Patient Assurance Program, individuals who are eligible for the program will save approximately 40%, as well as gain peace of mind in knowing they will have access to improved affordability,” the companies announced. “Individuals with plan designs that involve coinsurance and/or a high deductible, will benefit the most from this new program."...READ MORE

Laura Joszt, Managing Editor at The American Journal of Managed Care. Welcome to This Week in Managed Care from the Managed Markets News Network