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As retail pharmacies have struggled with staffing shortages, pharmacy workers across the U.S. have been sounding the alarm about dangerous working conditions, pushed by quotas and other metrics...Walgreens will no longer evaluate its pharmacy staffers based on speed and other metrics amid complaints from pharmacists across the industry that pressure to meet targets like the number of filled prescriptions is leading to dangerous mistakes and staff burnout...Walgreens, the country’s second-largest pharmacy chain, announced...that it is eliminating “task-based metrics” from performance evaluations to allow its pharmacy staffers to “place even greater focus on patient care.” They will now be evaluated “solely on the behaviors that best support patient care and enhance the patient experience,”...READ MORE

...recent busts, largely made possible by advances in tapping criminals’ encrypted phones, underscore a reality that European drug authorities have been warning about: More cocaine than ever is pouring into the continent, where South American chemists, traffickers and local mafias are helping to bring it to market...With increasingly clever ways of smuggling the drug and its coca base — including infusing cocaine into plastic chips, charcoal or clothes — authorities and analysts believe they may be finding only 10% to 15%, or even as little as 1%, of what’s coming into Europe, a booming market for cocaine that now rivals the one in the United States...READ MORE

The program provides roughly 700 monthly patients with vital medications they otherwise could not afford at no cost...The shelves stay stocked at the St. Vincent de Paul Charitable Pharmacy. As Southwest Ohio's only free pharmacy, there's no shortage of medication — and no shortage of people who need it...Opened in 2006 after local organization Leadership Cincincinnati advocated for a law change to allow for charitable pharmacies in the state of Ohio, the pharmacy now has a main facility at the Don & Phyllis Neyer Outreach Center and a second at the Western Hills Thrift Store...READ MORE

Local pharmacies are welcoming the news they will soon be able to refill some prescriptions for customers who don’t have a family doctor...But they agree with doctors who have said the change is not a long-term solution to the shortage of physicians...Overall, however, it is really needed right now, said Moez Karim, pharmacy manager, at The Pharmacy in Langley...“A lot of patients, especially in this area, they’re either seniors or they have real difficulty getting access to doctors and their family doctors. Often times, they are seeing them on the phone. I think they’re falling through the cracks. This is one way of reducing their stress.”...Minister of Health Adrian Dix announced last week that, starting Oct. 14, pharmacists across B.C. will be able to renew prescriptions for a wider range of medications so that people in B.C. can access medication “in a timely fashion and ensure continuity of their treatment.”...READ MORE

CVS reported a quarterly loss of more than $3 billion to cover its share of a global opioid settlement, but its third-quarter earnings blew past Wall Street estimates...The pharmacy retail giant said that it had a $5.2 billion charge in the third quarter for a settlement relating to its role in the opioid crisis. The settlement resolves "substantially all opioid lawsuits and claims filed by other states, political subdivisions and tribes against the company to be paid over 10 years, beginning in 2023...READ MORE

Rep. Lauren Underwood, D-Illinois, and Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, wrote a letter to CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure...calling out CMS to use new funding and existing authority to expand Medicare coverage. The letter comes amid rising rates of addiction deaths exacerbated in part by the pandemic...While Medicare does cover low-intensive levels of substance use disorder like therapy and high levels of care such as inpatient treatment, experts and advocates worry that CMS does not cover the full continuum of care for beneficiaries...READ MORE

Who decides how much you pay for prescription medicines? It's a question with a very complicated answer. Now, Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is hoping to simplify the process and save you money by opening his own pharmacy...Cuban helped launch Cost Plus Drugs in January. It's an online pharmacy with no storefronts that offers more than 1,000 generic drugs. The business model is built on transparency. Each drug profile breaks down how Cost Plus determines its price: cost plus a 15% markup, $3 pharmacy fee, and $5 for shipping..."We get people coming to us and saying 'your price is $10, my co-pay is $20,'" said Cuban. "'So I'm ignoring my insurance and coming straight to you.'"...Cost Plus does it by negotiating directly with drug manufacturers and cutting out the middleman...READ MORE

The biosimilar boom for provider-administered drugs continues to accelerate. Net prices in therapeutic classes with biosimilar competition have declined by 60% or more over the past few years. Some major biological reference products have now lost a majority of their unit sales to their biosimilars...this accelerating adoption also boosts profits for pharmaceutical wholesalers and specialty distributors—particularly when these channel participants can influence which biosimilar version a provider utilizes...READ MORE

EmpiRx Health saw a significant increase in pharmacy claims for behavioral health therapies but found managing these treatments in a value-based approach can mitigate the costs...The pharmacy benefit manager saw claims for behavioral health treatments grow 9.4% between 2020 and 2021...Utilization of antidepressant medications grew by 12% year over year, and use of treatments for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder increased by 20.2%...However, per claim spend for antidepressants declined by 1.8% between 2020 and 2021, and per claim spend for ADHD drugs decreased by 9.1%...“We published this data to shed light on this mental health tsunami as well as to demonstrate the successful outcomes of a financially aligned healthcare model," EmpiRx CEO Karthik Ganesh said...READ MORE

Moderna Inc has refused to hand over to China the core intellectual property behind the development of its COVID-19 vaccine, leading to a collapse in negotiations on its sale there...the vaccine maker is still “eager” to sell the product to China...READ MORE