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Two companies are on the cusp of taking a new treatment for opioid addiction to the U.S. market at a time when lawmakers are seeking ways to arrest an epidemic of heroin and painkiller abuse...Titan Pharmaceuticals Inc and...Braeburn Pharmaceuticals have together developed a matchstick-sized implant that analysts expect will be approved next month, despite mixed reviews...Implanted into the arm, the treatment is designed to be less vulnerable to abuse or illicit resale than the oral drugs that are currently used to treat opioid addiction...Two drugs are predominantly used to treat opioid addiction: methadone, which is dispensed only in government-endorsed clinics, and the less-addictive buprenorphine, which exists as a pill or strip of film...The implant, known as Probuphine, offers an alternative by administering buprenorphine for up to six months after users have first been stabilized on the oral form of the drug...Food and Drug Administration have raised reservations about possible complications from the insertion and removal of the 26mm long implant...

The soaring cost of prescription drugs has generated outrage among politicians and patients. Some cancer drugs carry price tags of more than $100,000 a year, and health plans are increasingly asking people to shoulder a greater share of the cost...Americans regularly cite drug prices as a top health care concern...Higher drug prices threaten to raise insurance premiums and patients’ out-of-pocket expenses and can cost taxpayers more because of Medicaid and other government programs. But drug companies say the prices reflect the enormous investment of time and resources that go into bringing a drug to market and argue that many times, their drugs can prevent more expensive medical interventions like surgery and hospitalization...So how much do drugs cost?...A drug’s path from the manufacturer to the patient is circuitous, and many middlemen are paid along the way...The pharmaceutical company sends the drug to a distributor, which takes a fee and then sells the drug to a pharmacy, which pockets its own fee before dispensing the medication to a patient. If a patient is insured, a pharmacy-benefit manager is paid for processing the transaction between the pharmacy and the insurer or employer. The pharmacy-benefit manager also handles the rebates that flow from the drug maker to the insurer or the employer...The good news first: The vast majority of drugs dispensed in the United States...are generics, which are low-cost alternatives to brand-name drugs. If your doctor writes you a prescription, there is a very good chance it will cost you $10 or less...patients who are the sickest and require the most expensive drugs are the most vulnerable to soaring drug prices..."It’s sort of embedded in the health care system that the price is never the price, unless you’re a cash-paying customer,"...

Germany’s strict drug pricing controls may be about to get a whole lot harsher as the country’s government is mulling over whether to lift a lucrative pricing amnesty...The current system sees healthcare insurers in the country negotiate discounted prices with pharma companies on their new meds--but the German government has for some time allowed those insurers to pay full price for the latest drugs up to a year from the time they win regulatory approval...following consultations with pharma companies, the health ministry said it would draw up new plans in the coming months to limit prices for new drugs and halt this one-year amnesty...Under this proposal drugmakers could still charge full price for new drugs--but it would mean health insurers would be able to start negotiating discounts once a drug’s sales hit around €250 million ($282 million)--a fairly low limit for blockbuster meds that can easily make two to three times that amount...Germany is struggling to pay its healthcare bills. Despite the efforts of the government to curb pricing, total expenditure in Germany’s statutory health sector rose 19.7% to €202 billion ($228.4 billion) in 2015 from 2011--with prescription-drug spending alone jumping 27.1% over the past 5 years...

Importance The optional free-text Notes field in ambulatory electronic prescriptions allows prescribers to communicate additional prescription-related information to dispensing pharmacists. However, populating this field with irrelevant or inappropriate information can create confusion, workflow disruptions, and potential patient harm.

Objectives To analyze the content of free-text prescriber notes in new ambulatory e-prescriptions and to develop recommendations to improve e-prescribing practices.

Main Outcomes and Measures Reviewers classified free-text prescriber notes as appropriate, inappropriate, or unnecessary.

Results 66.1% contained inappropriate content...

Conclusions and Relevance The free-text Notes field in e-prescriptions is frequently used inappropriately, suggesting the need for better prerelease usability testing, consistent end user training and feedback, and rigorous postmarketing evaluation and surveillance of EHR or e-prescribing software applications. Accelerated implementation of new e-prescribing standards and rapid adoption of existing ones could also reduce prescribers’ reliance on free-text use in ambulatory e-prescriptions.

Mike Glaicar, Business Development: Pharmacy Times...(PTNN) This weekly video program provides our readers with an in-depth review of the latest news, product approvals, FDA rulings and more.

Transitions of care programs are designed to provide continuity of care to patients as they move from inpatient hospital settings to home or other care settings. Historically, care transitions have been an area in which medication errors and other problems occur. Sometimes patients’ medication lists are a big puzzle, and often there is information that is missing...With a transitions of care program, pharmacists can solve the puzzle by figuring out what is happening by talking to patients about their medications and reconciling their medication lists...Patients who go through multiple transitions of care are often the sickest patients with the most chronic diseases...If you can coordinate care for patients who are going through multiple transitions at multiple points, then you can improve care quality and save money on the Medicare side...it very fulfilling to offer transitions of care pharmacy services to patients...When you have a patient who tells you ‘thank you so much’ for spending the time with them to review medications so they understand, it is very rewarding and demonstrates how important our service is...

Just after opening a refurbished manufacturing facility in Cape Town, South Africa earlier this year, pharma giant Johnson & Johnson recently opened the doors to its Global Public Health Africa Operations office there...The company has invested $21 million (300 million rand) in the facilities. The global public health facility will focus on HIV, tuberculosis and maternal, newborn and child health..."This (investment) tells us that South Africa has the capability to provide a facility for world-class manufacturing," Rob Davies, minister of the Department of Trade...

Pfizer Inc has agreed to pay $784.6 million to resolve allegations that Wyeth, which it acquired in 2009, underpaid drug rebates to Medicaid, the federal health insurance program...The settlement resolves claims by the U.S. and states that Wyeth knowingly reported false and fraudulent prices on two of its anti-acid drugs, Protonix Oral (pantoprazole) and Protonix IV...Wyeth offered hospitals deep discounts on bundles that included both drugs when made available to staff and patients...Wyeth wanted to induce hospitals to buy and use Protonix Oral, a drug they would otherwise have little incentive to prescribe because of other drugs that were already on the market and competitively priced...Wyeth hid the bundled discounts from Medicaid...

Walgreens has agreed to pay $500,000 in penalties, fees, and costs related to misleading advertising practices that led to New York customers being overcharged for products..."Businesses are required to ensure that their advertisements are truthful and not misleading..."When consumers purchase products at retail stores in New York, they should be able to rely on the prices displayed in advertisements and on shelf tags and not have to worry about being overcharged when they get to the register."...Walgreens has agreed to reform its advertising and business practices in New York...It must remove expired shelf tags within 36 hours, restrict the use of "Smart Buy" or "Great Buy," and refrain from using "Last Chance" or "Clearance" tags when the item is available at a reduced price for an extended period of time...Walgreens will also conduct internal and external price check audits in stores. If a store fails 2 consecutive external audits, it will have to pay a $2500 penalty.

India's lower house of parliament passed a bill this week to back a regional biotech center aimed at promoting expertise and research in South Asia and wider in the Asian region...The Regional Centre for Biotechnology--to be located in the northern state of Haryana--would offer degrees up to the doctorate level, while also serving as a home to academics with access to research facilities in biotechnology...India has lagged in comparison to other Asian nations such as Japan, China and Australia in growing a local biotech industry...The new center would seek to aid growth domestically in biotech as well as establish links abroad by offering course work training and research in biotechnology to students and researchers...