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Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper...signed legislation, S.B. 135, which expands collaborative practice for licensed pharmacists and opens the door for health benefit plans to provide coverage for pharmacists’ services...S.B. 135 allows pharmacists to enter into collaborative practice agreements with physicians and advanced practice nurses and grants licensed pharmacists the authority to provide healthcare services to patients under protocols delegated by a physician or advanced practice nurse. The law also authorizes pharmacists to provide care under a statewide drug therapy protocol developed by the boards of pharmacy, medicine, and nursing...the law does not require health plans to pay for pharmacists’ services...Health plans must reimburse pharmacists in their provider networks for services that would be reimbursed if provided by a physician or advanced practice nurse...

Doctors in states that track painkiller prescriptions were nearly one-third less likely to offer patients dangerously addicting opioids, a new study found...The launch of drug-monitoring programs in 24 states led to an immediate 30 percent drop in prescriptions for Schedule II opioids, the most addictive, in patients with pain complaints...We are moving in the direction of raising awareness about overprescribing these drugs...But we still have a lot to do in terms of changing the culture and practice of painkiller prescriptions...Drug-monitoring databases may make doctors think twice before prescribing pain medications for a variety of reasons in addition to uncovering "doctor shopping" by patients...Knowing that they’re being watched may serve as a deterrent, and the programs may generally increase awareness of the dangers of prescribing opioids...

Brian Haug, President of Pharmacy and Managed Markets, Pharmacy Times (PTNN) This weekly video program highlights the latest in pharmacy news, product news, and more.

Charity-run funds to help patients pay high co-payments face new scrutiny by prosecutors in two states and increased federal oversight, amid increasing questions about how they mask high drug prices...Three drugmakers — Gilead Sciences, Jazz Pharmaceuticals and Biogen — disclosed subpoenas this spring related to their funding of co-pay assistance programs...The Department of Health and Human Services' office of the inspector general stepped up its oversight of patient groups' relationships with pharmaceutical companies beginning late last year by alerting patient groups to possible violations of Medicare's anti-kickback rules... patients not getting their drugs would drag down (pharmaceutical companies') entire pricing approach...So it's easily worth it to them to donate to a charity, even if it costs them a few million dollars...Drugmakers aren't allowed to directly cover patients' prescription co-payments for Medicare or Medicaid, but they can donate to patient charities as long as they are independent of the pharmaceutical companies...One of the issues some find troubling about both co-pay assistance and coupons is that neither are for the uninsured. Insurers say they use co-payments to steer patients to less expensive drugs that are equally effective. So when co-payments are subsidized, patients are insulated from the high cost of a drug and insurers and employers bear the brunt of the drug price, which then gets built into premiums paid by consumers...

A congressional committee voted...to make changes to a controversial program that was designed to spur development of new drugs for neglected tropical diseases. But the effort...is still encountering criticism for not going far enough...At issue are priority review vouchers, which can be awarded to a drug maker that wins regulatory approval of a treatment for certain tropical diseases. Companies can later redeem a voucher when seeking approval for yet another medicine that would be used to treat any illness. And the Food and Drug Administration must review the other drug in six months, instead of the standard 10 months...critics say the program does not do enough to ensure drug makers develop needed salves. A chief complaint is that vouchers can be awarded to a company without having to invest in new R&D or even in a new medicine...House Energy and Commerce Committee...voted to address such concerns...For instance, companies would not be awarded a voucher for drugs previously approved in other countries; they would have to provide more information about plans to launch their tropical disease medicines outside the United States; and they would be required to provide data on patient demand worldwide.

The world's worst yellow fever outbreak in decades took hold in an Angolan slum because its early victims were Eritrean migrants whose false vaccination papers sent doctors off on the wrong path for weeks...The flare-up of the mosquito-borne disease has killed 325 people in Angola, spread as far as China - which has close commercial links with oil-rich Angola - and raised fears of the world running out of vaccine, but it might have been stopped in its tracks if it had been identified quickly in Luanda...Nearly the whole of Luanda has now been vaccinated, but the mass campaign across the rest of the country has depleted the world's emergency vaccine stockpile and there is no quick way to boost production...Manufacturers, including the Institut Pasteur, government factories in Brazil and Russia, and French drugmaker Sanofi, use a time-consuming method involving sterile chicken eggs...

Tucked inside a new Vermont law to combat opioid abuse are provisions that define clinical pharmacy services and indirectly confer healthcare provider status on pharmacists in the state...The legislation, formerly known as Vermont Senate Bill 243, defines a healthcare provider as "a person, partnership, or corporation, other than a facility or institution, that is licensed, certified, or otherwise authorized by law to provide professional health care service in this State to an individual during that individual's medical care, treatment, or confinement."...Separately, the law defines clinical pharmacy, in part, as the health science discipline through which a pharmacist "provides patient care to optimize medication therapy and to promote disease prevention and the patient's health and wellness."...The new law also states that insurers "may" pay or reimburse pharmacists for providing clinical services within their scope of practice...The next goal, he (VtSHP President Jeffrey Schnoor) said, is to secure reimbursement for services that pharmacists, as recognized healthcare providers, provide to Medicaid beneficiaries—and to be ready for future federal-level recognition as healthcare providers under Medicare.

...the Colombian health minister plans to unilaterally force Novartis to lower the price for its Gleevec (imatinib) cancer medicine after more than two weeks of talks over a price cut went nowhere...In public comments today, Health Minister Alejandro Gaviria said he will declare a lower price for the widely used cancer medicine as being in the public interest because it would save the country needed health dollars. Under this scenario, Novartis would be obligated to sell Gleevec at the new price, although he did not specify what that might be...The battle over Gleevec has been closely watched as the latest manifestation of a global skirmish over the cost of medicines. Patient groups see it as a test case for using legal rights to ensure needed medicines are accessible, while companies see it as a potentially precedent-setting case in which a middle-income country use trade rules to lower its drug costs...

The process for approving biosimilars has been moving slowly, but Aimee Tharaldson, PharmD, senior clinical consultant of emerging therapies at Express Scripts, foresees them as having the potential to lower costs for the industry and hopes the approval process will pick up speed.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said...along with international authorities, has formally sought to suspend 4,402 websites that illegally sell potentially dangerous, counterfeit or unapproved prescription drugs to U.S. consumers...The move is part of a global effort being led by the INTERPOL...to identify the makers and distributors of illegal prescription drugs...the FDA said it has also issued warning letters to operators of 53 websites that illegally sell unapproved and misbranded prescription drug products to U.S. consumers...Preliminary findings...showed U.S. consumers had purchased certain unapproved drug products from abroad to treat depression, narcolepsy, high cholesterol, glaucoma, and asthma, among other conditions...