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A Nevada judge effectively put the execution of a two-time killer on hold...after a pharmaceutical company objected to the use of one of its drugs to put someone to death...Clark County District Judge Elizabeth Gonzalez disallowed the use of the drug in a ruling that came down less than nine hours before Scott Raymond Dozier, 47, was to be executed with a three-chemical injection never before tried in the U.S...The Nevada Supreme Court could hear an appeal Wednesday afternoon of the judge's ruling to halt the use of a drug in the execution of a twice-convicted killer...Supreme Court spokesman Michael Sommermeyer says that some of the seven justices are in Chicago for a Nevada State Bar Association meeting, but that the court could meet by teleconference...The state of Nevada had not yet appealed by midday. The state said it would explore whether it could appeal to the Nevada Supreme Court...

• Return of Dispensed Drugs to a Pharmacy

National Pharmacy Compliance News

• DEA Launches New Tool to Help Distributors Make Informed Decisions About Customers
• PTCB Launches Certified Compounded Sterile Preparation Technician Program
• DEA Enables Mid-level Practitioners to Prescribe and Dispense Buprenorphine
• New CDC Training Offers CPE on Antibiotic Stewardship
• Walmart to Provide Free Solution to Dispose of Medications With Schedule II Prescriptions
• ASHP Research and Education Foundation Predicts Trends to Affect Pharmacy in 2018
• USP Encourages Pharmacists to Help Patients Find Quality Dietary Supplements
• New CPE Monitor Subscription Plan Helps Pharmacists Track Compliance Via Mobile App

Nevada State Board of Pharmacy News

• Controlled Substance Prescription DEA Number Requirement

Although malaria is beginning to be eradicated, it remains a global health issue and this is partially due to the existence of counterfeit and substandard drugs in the regions where malaria remains most prevalent: South East Asia and Africa...malaria still exists in many countries worldwide, and is an especially serious problem in Africa. Part of the explanation for the persistence of malaria in developing countries is the prevalence of substandard and counterfeit drugs being used to treat the disease...The WHO estimates one in ten medical products circulating in low and middle-income countries are substandard or falsified, with antibiotics and antimalarials being the most commonly reported...Taking low-quality or fake medicines can delay clinical recovery and increase mortality rates in patients. They can also promote resistance to the drug by introducing small, insufficient proportions of the active ingredients into the body...The GSMS (Global Surveillance and Monitory System ) published data from its first four years of operations in June 2017. 920 suspected products have been reported from 83 countries, and the most common were fake antimalarials, with 286 products reported from 26 countries.

As the #MeToo movement puts workplace sexual harassment at the front, Merck & Co. and Novartis, two of the largest pharma companies, find themselves entangled in a different kind of gender problem: alleged pregnancy discrimination...Merck for years has been embroiled in a lawsuit that accused it of discriminating against female sales reps in promotions and pay...The Merck suit...brought...by Kelli Smith, a former...saleswoman, alleged that Merck discriminated against female sales reps and against pregnant women in its decision on promotions and pay...Smith was demoted in March 2011, after she returned from maternity leave, and was put in the lowest-paid sales rep tier...Merck isn’t the only pharma company that has been under fire with gender-bias complaints. Novartis in 2010 agreed to pay $175 million to settle a similar suit. Christine Macarelli, a former...saleswoman, said in that case that her supervisor told her “women who find themselves in my position—single, unmarried—should consider an abortion,”...Now both Merck and Novartis are under scrutiny from the New York state government’s Division of Human Rights. The agency just sent the companies letters requesting information about the discrimination claims. Because New York has a law requiring employers to accommodate pregnant workers, the state could seek damages though administrative complaints, according to the NYT...

The Trump administration...halted billions of dollars in payments to health insurers under the Obamacare healthcare law, saying that a recent federal court ruling prevents the money from being disbursed...The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which administers programs under the Affordable Care Act, said the action affects $10.4 billion in risk adjustment payments...President Donald Trump’s administration has used its regulatory powers to undermine Obamacare after the Republican-controlled Congress last year failed to repeal and replace the law. About 20 million Americans have received health insurance coverage through the program...The payments are intended to help stabilize health insurance markets by compensating insurers that had sicker, more expensive enrollees in 2017. The government collects the money from health insurers with relatively healthy enrollees, who cost less to insure...

Laura Joszt, Managing Editor at The American Journal of Managed Care. Welcome to This Week in Managed Care from the Managed Markets News Network

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.

...the European Medicines Agency recommended Novartis’ Kymriah (tisagenlecleucel) and Kite Pharma’s Yescarta (axicabtagene ciloleucel), chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cells therapies for blood cancer, for approval in the European Union...Kymriah and Yescarta are the first CAR T-cell treatments to be recommended by the agency. In August 2017, Kymriah became the first CAR-T therapy approved by FDA in the United States, with Yescarta becoming the second in October 2017...Both drugs are also the first treatments supported through EMA’s Priority Medicines scheme to receive positive opinions from the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use...

Half of British doctors who received payments from the pharmaceutical industry last year remained anonymous -- prompting a call for greater transparency from drugmaker AstraZeneca Plc...About 128 million pounds ($169 million) flowed to medical professionals or organizations in consulting fees, travel expenses, donations and other items, the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry said...Disclosing which doctors got them is tricky due to data-privacy laws...Gaps in reporting have drawn increased scrutiny across Europe. Countries such as France and Portugal have moved to shed more light on pharma companies’ financial ties to doctors, which have been shown to sway prescribing habits. Health-care advocates are pushing for a system like that in the U.S., where legislation requires companies to fully divulge the relationships with medical practitioners...Pharma groups say there’s no need for more regulation. Doctors provide crucial insights on new medicines, often while collaborating with companies on clinical research, and they should be paid for their time, according to the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations...“There are numerous inefficiencies in the way that America does health care, but there’s one thing which I think America historically and consistently is pretty good at -- that’s transparency,”...“Clear rules are the only things that change behavior.”

Nevada plans to execute death row inmate Scott Dozier next week using the powerful painkiller fentanyl as well the sedative midazolam — a drug that critics have blamed for executions in other states in which prisoners were seen struggling for breath before they died...The Nevada Department of Corrections offered up formal notice...that it would be putting Dozier to death next Wednesday at 8 p.m. at Ely State Prison. They also released the new lethal injection drug protocol, which comes as the state’s supply of a drug formerly in the combination — diazepam — expired...Attorneys for Dozier didn’t immediately return requests for comment on Tuesday about whether they would take any steps to challenge the protocol, or whether Dozier approves of the method...