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Pharmacists rank third in Gallup’s 2018 survey of honesty and ethical standards, maintaining their consistently strong showing in the annual measure of diverse professions. Health-related professions swept the top three, with nurses ranking first and medical doctors ranking second – just one percentage point ahead of pharmacists...“We want to thank pharmacists for their trusted work as the face of neighborhood healthcare, which is reflected consistently in Gallup’s survey,” NACDS president and CEO Steve Anderson said...“Just as Americans walk into their pharmacies for access to quality care, policymakers turn to these professionals for advice on pressing issues. These issues include addressing the opioid abuse epidemic, reducing patients’ out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs, and improving access to care through newer pharmacist-provided services.”

Walgreens Boots Alliance announced plans...to its cut annual costs by $1 billion within three years and reported first-quarter results that beat Wall Street’s estimates...The results also showed sales are struggling in Britain, one of its largest markets...Walgreens shares are down more than 2 percent this year bringing its market value to $69.3 billion. The stock has been under pressure as investors worry about the impact Amazon will have as it expands into the pharmacy business. To prepare for increased competition, Walgreens has announced partnerships with Kroger, Alphabet’s Verily and others...

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

A report from the majority staff of the House Energy and Commerce Committee found that distributors, which fulfill orders for prescription drugs to pharmacies, failed to conduct proper oversight of their customers by not questioning suspicious activity and not properly monitoring the quantity of painkillers that were being shipped to individual pharmacies...The committee also found that the DEA did not properly use a database that aims to monitor the flow of powerful prescription painkillers from manufacturers to sellers, something that could have allowed federal agents — in real time —...The agency also curtailed enforcement of distributors...and infighting inside the agency affected the way cases were handled...

Barbara McAneny, president of the American Medical Association, recently described a patient with metastatic prostate cancer who tried to kill himself after he could not get the medication he was prescribed for bone pain because...his insurer...denied coverage...my patient nearly died of an underdose...McAneny was talking about the suffering caused by government pressure to reduce opioid prescriptions, which has led to denials of treatment and arbitrary dose reductions...A Medicare rule that take effect on January 1 will compound that problem...

- Providers and commissioners must nominate a board member responsible for Brexit preparation
- Anxiety about staff or members of the public stockpiling
- National operational response centre being established as staff assigned to Brexit readiness

In terms of medicines supply, the guidance said the government has agreed it will be prioritised, and stockpiling organised centrally will be supplemented by “additional national actions”...Today’s guidance reiterates previous instructions from the health secretary that medicines should not be stockpiled locally...HSJ understands national NHS leaders are seriously concerned some staff or parts of the UK may begin stockpiling particular medicines – or letting patients stockpile them – which could lead to shortages elsewhere. Local NHS chief executives said senior national figures had this week shown “anxiety” and “serious worry” about the potential consequences of Brexit.

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.

Industry wisdom is that there is nothing new to learn about tablet making. Drugmakers have been doing it essentially the same way for more than 100 years. But that idiom was turned on its head this year when the FDA learned suspected carcinogens could be formed in “sartan” drugs from a specific sequence of manufacturing steps and chemical reactions—and that the U.S. drug supply had been riddled with them for years...The initial discovery of one of the impurities, N-nitrosodimethylamine, came this summer at a U.S. drug manufacturer that had used valsartan API from China’s Zhejiang Huahai Pharmaceutical...the FDA has since learned that the impurities were found in the APIs of other drugmakers, including Aurobindo and Mylan, and in finished products from Sandoz, Teva and others...

A new nonprofit announced it will help fill the gap that was left earlier this year when federal budget cutbacks shut down a website that housed clinical guidelines for healthcare professionals...A new nonprofit announced it will help fill the gap that was left earlier this year when federal budget cutbacks shut down a website that housed clinical guidelines for healthcare professionals...The shutdown included AHRQ’s National Quality Measures Clearinghouse...The new nonprofit, The Alliance for the Implementation of Clinical Practice Guidelines, said recently it was launching Guideline Clearinghouse 2.0. AiCPG said it was created for the “charitable, educational and scientific purposes of freely disseminating evidence-based clinical practice guidelines information to the healthcare community in order to educate clinicians to improve patient care...A new nonprofit announced it will help fill the gap that was left earlier this year when federal budget cutbacks shut down a website that housed clinical guidelines for healthcare professionals.

An advisory panel to the Food and Drug Administration....recommended prescribing the opioid overdose reversal drug, naloxone, along with addictive painkillers...The recommendation of the panel underscores concerns about the growing opioid overdose epidemic...FDA studies found that co-prescribing naloxone to all patients who are prescribed painkillers could increase annual healthcare costs by $63.9 billion to $580.8 billion...I think co-prescribing is an expensive way to saturate the population with naloxone. The at-risk population is not necessarily the ones that are being prescribed new narcotics...