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Managers of EHR systems share what they like – and what they'd like to see changed..When we set out to survey Healthcare IT News readers about their electronic health record platforms,..survey was limited to readers who were actively engaged in the management or use of an EHR…After asking them to rate the systems numerically, we posed two open-ended questions: "What do you like best?" and "What would you change?"...responses demonstrated a sense of passion about the importance EHRs continue to play in delivering clinical care – and a sincere desire for the systems' continued improvement.

Allscripts , Cerner , Epic , eClinicalWorks , GE Healthcare , McKesson , MEDITECH , NextGen ,Siemens

A hard drumbeat of FDA complaints against more than two dozen companies in India for quality violations has affected 39 drugmaking facilities, creating an avalanche of remedial work that could take years and is steadily driving up medicine costs in the United States…FT (Financial Times) said it counted 6 Indian drugmakers that had manufacturing sites hauled up by the FDA…encompassing 27 companies…spate of massive product recalls.

China will push patients to seek medical treatment locally in a bid to overhaul a over-burdened healthcare system where wide gaps between urban and rural care often mean people travel hundreds of miles to seek help in cities…. by 2017 all patients with serious illnesses will receive treatment within their own county,… drive could reduce steep costs for its citizens… also a lure for investors and firms betting billions of dollars on China opening up a market set to be worth around $1.3 trillion by 2020.

EU needs to better define mercury limits for drugs and dietary supplements say Polish researchers who want pharmaceuticals in Europe to be tested more regularly….because patients are also exposed to environmental sources of the metal those taking pills regularly could build up harmful accumulations of the metal…. Low-quality raw materials, inadequate control during the production and drug counterfeiting can lead to high concentrations of mercury in the final product, which can pose a health threat to consumers, poisoning and even death.

The European Medicines Agency has started its full medical literature monitoring service...Medical literature…source of information on suspected adverse reactions to medicines…European Union's pharmacovigilance legislation has given EMA responsibility for the monitoring of selected medical literature for a defined list of active substances used in medicines and for entering identified reports of suspected adverse reactions in EudraVigilance,..By reducing duplication of reporting from multiple pharmaceutical companies, the initiative will improve the safety monitoring of medicines by enhancing the quality and consistency of data reported...

An analysis in Canadian Family Physician casts further doubt on the ability of marijuana to provide pain relief for patients with chronic noncancer pain. Yet,..in the same issue, Roger Ladouceur,...suggests that pain management specialists continue to prescribe it… While acknowledging that the clinical evidence in support of prescribing marijuana is limited, the editorial makes the case that physician involvement in prescribing it avoids a situation in which patients who say that the drug offers them relief are forced to get it wherever and however they can.

Medicare program's shift from volume to value continues with the finalization of the regulation setting inpatient payment rates for fiscal year 2016, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced on July 31…annual update to Medicare's inpatient prospective payment system affects discharges occurring on or after October 1, 2015,..

• Hospital-acquired conditions reduction program…will continue its policy of reducing by 1% the reimbursement rate of hospitals in the bottom performance quartile...
• Value-based purchasing program…incentivizes rather than penalizes hospitals, will include new measures during 2016 that will be used for 2018 payment calculations, including one measure directly related to medication use.
• Add-on payments…authorizes a "new technology add-on payment" for blinatumomab,…for the treatment of a form of B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia…maximum add-on payment for the drug during 2016 is $27,017.85 per case,..authorize add-on payments for new technologies or medical services—including drugs—that produce greater clinical benefits than existing technologies..
• Update on "two-midnight rule."…rule was intended to clarify when patients should be treated as outpatients—generally under observation status—or admitted as inpatients…patients who are expected to require care spanning two midnights (i.e., 12:00 a.m. on two consecutive days) should be admitted as inpatients,… although inpatients and patients on observation status receive the same care, observation patients face higher out-of-pocket costs for medications because Medicare pays differently for drugs in inpatient and outpatient settings.

Abbott Healthcare is challenging an Indian state's accusation that a sample of the company's cough syrup contained excessive levels of codeine,...the laboratory found that a sample of Phensedyl contained more than twice the labeled amount of codeine,..Abbott denied the allegations and urged regulators to not take any action. Abbott said it had found nothing unusual in its own and third party testing of a retained sample from the same batch of Phensedyl....also asked regulators to give it more information about the source of the suspect sample and the manner in which it was collected, so that it could establish whether it was genuine and proper process was followed.

California’s pharmacists would be required to provide prescription drug labels or medication instructions in five languages besides English under a bill passed unanimously…by California lawmakers…AB 1073, will be sent to Gov…Brown for his signature…Upon request from patients or their caregivers, pharmacists would need to provide medication instructions in Spanish, Tagalog, Chinese, Vietnamese or Korean, the most common languages in California after English. The instructions could be on prescription labels or in patient handouts...

Vladimir Putin says support from Russian business community is needed to help achieve the domestic drug manufacturing goals set out in his Pharma 2020 policy…. Government investment…would help increase local drug manufacture and reduce reliance on imports…private investment from the country's drugmakers is now needed…Putin stressed a commitment to local manufacture would not mean a ban on foreign imports.