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Ned Milenkovich, PharmD, JD, 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.

More than 450 patients died prematurely in a British hospital after they were given powerful painkillers with no medical justification, in what a damning report on Wednesday found was a “disregard for human life”...Britain’s prosecution service said it would examine whether criminal charges could be brought following the deaths at Gosport War Memorial Hospital in southern England...An independent panel found that between 1989 and 2000, there was an institutionalized regime of prescribing and administering dangerous doses of opioids at the hospital which were not clinically necessary...“There was a disregard for human life and a culture of shortening the lives of a large number of patients,” the report said, adding that warnings from nurses had been ignored and there had been a failure by police and medical regulators to protect patients.

A grand jury has indicted CEO Elizabeth Holmes and...Sunny Balwani for alleged fraud at Theranos, the disgraced Silicon Valley company that once promised to revolutionize blood testing in a pitch that was too good to be true...The criminal charges filed by federal prosecutors allege that Holmes and Balwani bilked investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars while also defrauding doctors and patients through years of lies that put thousands of people in personal danger...(they) are charged with two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and nine counts of wire fraud in the indictment, which was handed down on Thursday and unsealed on Friday. They now each face a maximum of 20 years in prison and up to $2.7 million in fines, a figure that doesn’t include any cash the government might demand as restitution for the alleged fraud...Holmes and Balwani lied brazenly about their technology’s capabilities — even though they knew it was inaccurate, unreliable, slow, and limited in terms of the tests it could perform...They marketed their blood test sold in Walgreens stores to consumers in Arizona and California, the indictment says, even though they knew it could not consistently report accurate levels of calcium, chloride, and potassium, among other medical tests. They told investors that they were using their own proprietary machines to test patients’ blood, when in fact they were using commercially available analyzers they’d purchased...

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.

A new report on opioids from DC-based healthcare consulting firm Avalere found supply levels were 11% lower in 2017 compared with 2016...The decline is seen in most states, and the greatest reductions are where laws have been passed to set limits on opioid prescriptions, with Maine seeing a fall of 24.8% after legislation was passed in 2016...The only state to see an increase was Idaho, with a 59.7% growth in opioid prescriptions. This included an almost three-fold rise between 2016 and 2017 in the amount of oxycodone sold...Avalere's analysis is based on opioid analgesics data from the Drug Enforcement Agency's Automation of Reports and Consolidated Orders System, which tracks distribution of most controlled substances from manufacture through distribution and point-of-sale...

The Food and Drug Administration has published a statement from its commissioner Scott Gottlieb proposing a new reimbursement model for antibiotics and antimicrobials, which it believes will help achieve associated public health goals and overcome investment challenges...The FDA’s idea is that instead of hospitals being reimbursed for antimicrobials on a per-use, which it claims is hindering research and development in the field, they will be reimbursed for licences for certain antimicrobials drugs that target multi-drug resistant infections...The FDA believes this model will help to achieve public health goals because it would ‘create a natural market for drugs that meet certain public health criteria, by providing a predictable return on investment and revenue stream through more foreseeable licensing fees’ and ‘it would put the institutions fully in charge of stewardship of these important medicines. Once they purchase the ability to access a drug, they would be stewards of its use up to a certain number of annual doses’...the proposal would address investment challenges faced by producers of antimicrobials that target multi-drug resistant organisms because it may offer a ‘pull incentive’ that can create a predictable market for antimicrobials with a narrow set of public health applications. In addition, it could disconnect return on investment on these drugs from the volume of the drug that is used...

Pharmacy owners who ask themselves the following 5 questions on a weekly basis will find that this exercise helps them create the pharmacies that they want, ones that matter in their communities and ones that help create lifestyles that benefit their families.

1. Is what got me where I am today going to get me where I want to go tomorrow?
2. Have I differentiated myself in the marketplace?
3. Am I organizing my time, effort, and other resources around winning strategies and great marketing to build the future I want, or am I still clinging to the status quo, which is based on yesterday’s breadwinners and today’s mistakes?
4. Am I focusing each hour of every single working day on those few activities that contribute the most to increasing cash flow and profits?
5. What do potential patients value most that they are not finding from me and are seeking from my competitors?

The 340B Drug Pricing Program took center stage at the Senate's HELP panel for the third time in several months...this time turning the focus to audits of hospitals and drug manufacturers conducted by the Health Resources and Services Administration...HRSA Director Krista Pedley said that, in the past five years, 12 of 600 program manufacturers faced audits compared to 981 of 12,700 of hospitals...No findings of wrongdoing were discovered in any of the 12 audits of manufacturers, she noted, whereas 60% of the audits of covered entities resulted in repayment to manufacturers...

Kentucky has sued Walgreens for its role in the state's opioid epidemic...Attorney General Andy Beshear filed the suit against Walgreens for its dual role as a distributor and a pharmacy, saying it allegedly failed to monitor its own operations and shipped and dispensed large amounts of opioids...The lawsuit alleges "unfair, misleading and deceptive business practices by Walgreens for excessively distributing and dispensing opioids in Kentucky and for failing to legally report to state and federal authorities the suspiciously large orders it received for prescription opioids."...This is the sixth opioid-related suit Beshear has filed. He's sued three drug distributors, AmerisourceBergen, which Walgreens Boots Alliance owns a roughly 26 percent stake in, McKesson and Cardinal Health. He's also sued pharmaceutical manufacturers, including Johnson & Johnson.

Kelly Davio, welcome to This Week in Managed Care from the Managed Markets News Network