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Federal prosecutors...say VA doctors took kickbacks to promote ‘biologic’ bandage to colleagues...A former pharmaceutical company executive accused of bribing Veterans Affairs Department doctors to promote his firm’s product...Advanced BioHealing Inc. executive Todd Clawson pleaded guilty...to a bribery-related charge brought by federal prosecutors...Prosecutors say Clawson...paid kickbacks to VA podiatrists and clinicians who promoted the company’s product...According to prosecutors, Clawson...and VA physicians conspired to "defraud the United States by impeding and impairing the governmental functions of the VA, including those intended to regulate the ethical practice of physicians working for the VA."...Details of the plea were sealed by the court...Clawson is currently scheduled to be sentenced...

It’s that time of year, time to pick your favorite narcotic and see if it will make it to the final 4! This year the bracket has expanded to include all of the pain relievers...The Match-ups:

• Dilaudid vs Demerol
• Hydrocodone vs. Oxycodone
• Motrin vs. That med that starts with a D
• Tordol vs. Nubane
• Fentanyl vs. Ultram
• Morphine vs. Tylenol
• Celebrex vs. Methadone
• Sufentanil vs. Codiene

Stay-tuned as the results will come in soon!

The World Health Organization has warned that the Zika R&D frenzy may not culminate in a vaccine in time for the current outbreak, but Sanofi Chief Scientific Officer Gary Nabel won't take that for an answer. Nabel says it can be done, but it means turning the traditional vaccine development model on its head...In an interview...Nabel highlighted that the classic response to emerging and infectious diseases, such as MERS and Ebola, has been inadequate...We just run from one crisis to another…That's no way to protect the world's population...The traditional vaccine development timeline typically takes 5 years or more to produce a marketable vaccine... To have a chance at accelerating this for emerging diseases, biotechs and pharmas, regulators and government agencies need to come together and unpack this model, identifying where time can be saved and exploring different ways to go about clinical trials...(Nabel) identified WHO as "symptomatic of the problem." While it has "the best of intentions," it doesn't have the wherewithal to follow through...The agency has declared Zika a global public health emergency and in February called for $56 million in funding to combat the virus. Just over a month later, only $3 million--5%--in funding has trickled in...

Novartis...agreed to pay $25 million to settle charges that it violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by making illegal payments to health care providers in China. In doing so, the company becomes the latest drug maker to get punished for paying bribes in order to boost sales in a foreign country...The settlement also comes just one month after South Korean authorities raided Novartis offices in search of evidence the company bribed local doctors...In China, Novartis employees at two different Chinese subsidiaries gave money, gifts, vacations, and entertainment, among other things, to health care professionals between 2009 and 2011, according to an administrative order filed by the US Securities and Exchange Commission...At the same time, the SEC said that Novartis failed to devise and maintain a sufficient system of internal accounting controls and lacked an effective anticorruption compliance program to detect and prevent these schemes. As a result, the improper payments were not accurately reflected in Novartis’s books and records...Novartis spokesman...the issues raised by the SEC largely pre-date many of the compliance-related measures introduced by Novartis across its global organization in recent years. We believe these measures...address the issues raised by the SEC and reflect a broader initiative by Novartis to align and enhance our compliance standards globally...

Novartis and the Department of Justice are squabbling over documents that allegedly contain details of nearly 80,000 "sham" events that the drug maker used to encourage doctors to prescribe several blood pressure medicines...The tussle comes as part of a run-up to a planned trial this summer in which the feds plan to argue that Novartis violated federal antikickback laws...the drug maker has maintained the government is unfairly expanding the scope of its inquiry...The trial is an outgrowth of a whistleblower lawsuit filed five years ago by Oswald Bilotta, a former Novartis sales rep, and was joined by the Justice Department in 2013...the feds wrote that "this case implicates issues of enormous public concern: whether Novartis defrauded federal health care programs of hundreds of millions of dollars by systematically providing inducements to doctors across the country...in an effort to influence the drugs they prescribed to patients in their care."...

The Department of Health and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency have launched a consultation on changes to the Human Medicines Regulations and the Medicines Act...The consultation seeks views on the following proposed changes:

• allowing independent pharmacies to make use of ‘hub and spoke’ dispensing models – a ‘hub’ pharmacy dispenses medicines on a large scale, often by making use of automation, preparing and assembling the medicines for regular ‘spoke’ pharmacies that supply the medicines to the patient;
• allowing the price of medicines and a statement on how the costs of medicines are met to be published on dispensing labels should this be required for NHS medicines dispensed as part of NHS pharmaceutical services;
• clarifying the current dispensing label requirements for monitored dosage systems and medicines supplied under patient group directions; and
• amending the pharmacists’ exemption in section 10 of the Medicines Act, regarding the preparation and assembly of medicines, following a judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union.

In a typical response to publicity that its pharma supply chain has been breached, China has rounded up dozens of suspects as it investigates an operation said to have illegally sold vaccines that may not have been safely stored or shipped...Citing China's official news agency, Xinhua, Reuters reports that authorities arrested 37 people in the crackdown. The report said the arrests were made after Premier Li Keqiang called for a complete investigation but that it wasn't clear that everyone picked up was tied to the operation that reportedly sold $88 million worth of vaccines over 5 years...China has been beefing up its drug and food safety apparatus for several years after being embarrassed internationally over a number of cases where tainted products showed up in China or were shipped to other countries. It is pretty common for authorities to respond with a police sweep that nabs lots of people...

iMedicare, a company that provides Medicare Part D plan comparison software to pharmacies, announced recently that it had launched RefillReport.com, a platform that aims to help patients connect with local pharmacies to save money on their Medicare plan...The site is looking to help patients compare plans at different community pharmacies and potentially save money on a Medicare plan. It also features information about how Medicare Part D works, answers frequently asked questions and keeps information updated about different challenges that could affect patients throughout the year...

Lawyers have given health minister Alistair Burt a deadline of 4pm on 18 March 2016 to respond to claims that the consultation on proposed cuts to the pharmacy budget in England is illegal and should be abandoned...If the government does not accept that the consultation is illegal then lawyers will consider going to the High Court to seek a judicial review of the consultation process and the content of the consultation document...The prospect of legal action comes three months after the Department of Health first outlined its proposals for the community pharmacy sector in England in a letter to the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee. The letter...set out plans to cut the community pharmacy contractual framework by 6.1% in 2016. As well as the funding cuts, the proposals include a range of measures to make efficiency savings in the sector while extending clinical roles for the profession...Healthwatch England told the government that there is a "clear appetite" for community pharmacy to play a greater role in health prevention, the treatment of minor ailments and supporting people with long-term conditions. It says consumers value pharmacy’s accessibility and some believe co-locating pharmacies to GP surgeries makes sense...However, the organisation gives a cautious welcome to the idea of ‘hub-and-spoke’ dispensing and says that where medicines are assembled centrally, patients will still need local access to expert pharmacy advice.

Dr. Thomas S. Franko discusses drug diversion and prescription drug abuse (podcast 30:10m).