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Patients who need to dispose of unwanted controlled substances and other medications are embracing the convenience of drug disposal kiosks managed by their local health-system pharmacies..."We've collected a little over two tons, in the last year, of unwanted medications," said Buck Stanford, community pharmacy operations director for Intermountain Healthcare...all 25 of Intermountain Healthcare's community pharmacies have a way for patients to dispose of their medicines...Kristina McGill...at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital...fall became the second in Massachusetts to set up a drug disposal kiosk and the first to install one outside of the pharmacy...Both health systems obtained their kiosks, known as MedSafe units, from Sharps Compliance Inc....The steel kiosks are double padlocked and contain an inner receptacle consisting of sturdy inner and outer cardboard boxes plus plastic liners and absorbent pads. The inner boxes double as a shipping container for sending the medications away for incineration...The Drug Enforcement Administration in...2014 implemented a regulation that allows pharmacies and other healthcare entities to register as collection sites for controlled substances and other unwanted medications...as of February 29, a total of 882 DEA registrants had been designated as collectors...ASHP policy 0614, Safe Disposal of Patients' Home Medications, encourages pharmacists to develop patient-oriented medication disposal options that minimize the risk of accidental poisoning, drug diversion, and adverse effects on the environment...

The National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day aims to provide a safe, convenient, and responsible means of disposing of prescription drugs, while also educating the general public about the potential for abuse of medications.

A Nevada Congressman is pushing to make sure emergency medical teams retain the ability to administer life-saving medicine in the field. Congressman Joe Heck says the Drug Enforcement Agency wants certain drugs to be used only in hospitals, because of fears over the accountability of controlled substances and how they are administered. Heck says paramedics should be able to do the job they’re trained to do...current law states that medical directors can create standing orders that apply to emergency situations. If a patient meets certain criteria, a substance can be administered in the field...He says the DEA wants to take that ability away from paramedics, saying they can no longer use controlled substances, even under these standing orders from medical directors. Heck says this will hinder a paramedic’s ability to give quality care to a patient. He says this is an issue especially in rural areas, where a patient could be in an ambulance for a long time without proper care..."There’s a way to make sure that we can ensure the accountability of these controlled substances while still allowing the paramedics to administer these life-saving materials...this bill will specify the protocol for a physician creating a standing order. The bill also says standing orders must be made available for Attorney General Loretta Lynch at her request...

Theranos Inc. filed a plan to U.S. regulators to fix serious deficiencies at the company’s blood-testing lab in Newark, California, as founder Elizabeth Holmes works to regain credibility for her struggling startup...The company submitted the proposed plan of correction...to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services...Theranos also confirmed the filing, though it didn’t release details of the plan...CMS said in late January that Theranos’s violations of federal regulations posed "immediate jeopardy" to patients’ health and safety...Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. and...Capital BlueCross have said they’re curtailing use of Theranos’s tests while the shortcomings identified by CMS are addressed. Theranos has hired a new lab director and said it’s working quickly to correct other problems, including personnel issues, along with the defects tied to blood testing...

An Illinois-based psychiatrist has been sentenced to 9 months in federal prison and ordered to pay nearly $600,000 for accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in pharmaceutical industry kickbacks...Michael J. Reinstein, MD, was convicted of accepting payments from industry in the form of consulting fees, entertainment, and all-expense-paid vacations in exchange for prescribing and promoting first the brand-name version and then the generic version of the antipsychotic clozapine to thousands of indigent elderly patients in Chicago-area nursing homes and hospitals...In addition to the 9-month sentence, ordered by US District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman, Dr Reinstein was ordered to forfeit $592,000 and perform 120 hours of community service following his release from federal prison...Dr Reinstein fully cooperated with the government in its ongoing investigation into healthcare practices in the Chicago area...In recognition of this cooperation...sentence was reduced to 9 months in a federal prison.

The Nevada Board of Medical Examiners had a backlog of 525 complaints at the start of 2015. An additional 1,078 complaints were filed last year...By the end of the year, 570 complaints were pending...only 19 medical doctors and physician assistants were publicly disciplined last year...How can a board that's falling behind ever erase that backlog and fulfill its duty to discipline bad medical doctors?...Executive Director Edward Cousineau said Wednesday that the office is making headway and that the situation not as bleak as the numbers suggest...

CVS Pharmacy, Inc. has agreed to pay $8 million to the United States to resolve allegations that its Maryland pharmacies violated the Controlled Substances Act by dispensing controlled substances pursuant to prescriptions that were not issued for a legitimate medical purpose...According to the settlement agreement, CVS acknowledged that between 2008 and 2012 certain CVS pharmacy stores in Maryland dispensed controlled substances, including oxycodone, fentanyl and hydrocodone, in a manner not fully consistent with their compliance obligations under the CSA and related regulations. This included failing to comply with a pharmacist’s liability to ensure the controlled substance prescriptions were issued for a legitimate medical purpose. This settlement caps off an investigation that began as part of the DEA’s crackdown on prescription drug abuse in Maryland..

The Swiss importer that supplied fake Harvoni to Israel has named the Indian manufacturer from which it bought the drug and is cooperating with an investigation say regulators...The knockoff versions of Gilead's $1,350-a-pill hepatitis C drug seized by Israeli authorities were supplied by a Swiss trading firm, which sourced them from a manufacturer in India according to...Swissmedic...Under the Swiss Federal Act on Medicinal Products and Medical Devices, Swissmedic can neither name the Swiss trader nor contact any other customers to which it may have supplied Harvoni until the investigation is completed...Similar investigations have taken up to two years...Gilead licensed rights to manufacture and distribute pills...Harvoni...to...Indian companies Cadila Healthcare, Cipla, Hetero Labs, Ranbaxy Laboratories, Sequent Scientific and Strides Arcolab...

In the latest sign that global drug makers remain under scrutiny for their dealings with health care providers, South Korean authorities raided Novartis offices in search of evidence the company provided bribes to local doctors…Seoul Western District Prosecutors’ Office confiscated various documents, including account books, in order to determine whether rebates the drug maker offered physicians may have actually been bribes...The probe appears to be at an early stage, but is likely to be closely watched for signs that global drug makers continue to stumble in their practices in various foreign markets…

In the latest government effort to penalize unfair competition among drug makers, the United Kingdom fined GlaxoSmithKline $54.5 million for illegally colluding with generic rivals to delay marketing lower-cost versions of the Paxil antidepressant...the UK Competitions and Market Authority found that between 2001 and 2004, Glaxo made payments totaling about $72 million to several generic companies. The deals were reached as part of a settlement to end patent litigation that was filed by Glaxo against the generic drug makers...Such settlements are known as pay-to-delay, since a brand-name drug company pays cash or transfers something else of value to a generic rival, which agrees to delay launching a copycat medicine. In 2001, Paxil was a blockbuster with sales in the UK exceeding $130 million...In this instance, the agreement deferred competition and potentially deprived the UK’s National Health Service of a lower-cost generic Paxil. UK authorities noted that when a generic version of Paxil eventually became available at the end of 2003, average prices fell by more than 70 percent in two years...Cracking down on these practices is essential to protect consumers, to encourage legitimate business activity that such practices stifle, and to stimulate innovation and growth...