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Walgreens will pay a $500,000 settlement concerning a civil complaint that the retail pharmacy giant was not compliant with California regulations related to pharmacist consultations… noncompliant with rules requiring pharmacists to perform consultations with patients receiving new prescriptions or new dosages…

Less than six weeks from an oft-delayed deadline,..Questions abound regarding the financial repercussions of the coding format conversion across the provider spectrum, but especially for small hospitals and physician clinics…biggest fear is that a blizzard of claims denials… many providers are braced for a dramatic fall-off in revenues once the deadline hits…as high as 40 percent revenue loss in the first few weeks. Uncertainty reigns throughout the provider, payer and vendor sectors..

Thousands of Nevada Medicaid patients may soon have to find new doctors…One of two managed care organizations that contract with the state..is about to lose a large network of primary care physicians and specialists…HealthCare Partners of Nevada — confirmed that it will withdraw from Amerigroup Community Care on Nov. 30,..

Nye County Emergency Management Office…has developed an emergency response plan to support the needs of the communities directly affected by the closure…"Our number one priority is to ensure the long-term safety to the residents of this community..."

NCEM said it has executed the following procedures to mitigate some of the impact the NRMC (Nye Regional Medical Center ) closure:

1. Life Guard Air Ambulance service has brought in an additional plane to double its air ambulance capability
2. Nye County has reportedly reached agreements with neighboring Nevada counties and Inyo County in California to meet the Nye county ambulances half way to cut patient transport times. The following locations have also been included in the response plan: Battle Mountain, Banner-Churchill, Esmeralda, Goldfield, Beatty, Bishop and Hawthorne
3. Nye County is reportedly in negotiations with Humboldt General Hospital for an additional mutual aid ambulance crew

Health Secretary says officials influenced by pharma payments could face jail time...England may have been behind the U.S. in shining the light on financial ties between pharma and physicians, but that's changing..National Health Service doctors be required to declare all gifts they receive from drugmakers. They'll also face losing their jobs--or even jail--if pharma payments influence their work..

Money laundering. Customs forms falsifications. Conspiring with a supposedly "impartial"…certification program to sell fake cancer medicines to unsuspecting doctors and clinics — and then giving that certification program’s employee an all-expenses paid trip to a tropical island…disturbing federal indictment unsealed...Department of Justice against CanadaDrugs,..PharmacyChecker,... there are 10 important takeaways,..from the indictment.

1. When they sell to US residents, Canadian Internet pharmacies aren’t really selling drugs from Canada
2. The medicines were fake
3. Cold-chain drugs were stored at too-warm temperatures, returned and then resold to other customers in their adulterated state
4. CanadaDrugs was raking in the profits from the sale of drugs, including counterfeits, to US residents
5. After it became aware of the FDA investigation, CanadaDrugs took steps to cover up its counterfeit drug sales, moving the drugs offshore, and continued selling illegal drugs to US residents
6. CanadaDrugs knowingly engaged in illegal activity, putting patients at risk
7. The Canadian International Pharmacy Association certifies Canadian online pharmacies — and is run, in part, by CanadaDrugs
8. CanadaDrugs lied, and falsified US Customs records to smuggle illegal drugs into the USA
9. PharmacyChecker employee helped store the counterfeit drugs in his garage
10. PharmacyChecker approved CanadaDrugs as legitimate despite knowing that CanadaDrugs used an illegal and unsafe supply chain

Italian Ministry of Health has banned compounding pharmacies from preparing drugs containing any of seven APIs after chemists were discovered making dangerous off-label weight loss treatments....ban, backed by the Italian Drug Agency, comes after some compounding pharmacies created unregistered slimming drugs from combinations of APIs not intended for weight control.

• TRIAC/tiratricol 
• fluoxetine and bupropion
• clorazepate
• furosemide
• metformin
• topiramate

Here we go again. Another public opinion pool (poll) where Big Pharma shows up among the least likable industries or lands near the bottom when it comes to corporate industry reputation.This time it's the monthly Kaiser Family Foundation health tracking poll…While the core of the study focused on consumers' opinions about drug prices, several questions also tallied public sentiment regarding pharma. And it ain't good.

A&P is seeking approval to sell pharmacy assets for several of the stores it is immediately closing to Rite Aid in a transaction valued at $8.1 million, Rite Aid has agreed to buy the prescription files for 12 stores that are closing…"When a pharmacy is closing, the value of pharmacy related assets, particularly customer prescriptions, is unstable and the transactions must occur on an accelerated timeline to avoid permanent and significant diminution of value,"

...when medical care providers aren’t forced to accept bundled payments…that could cost them money if the care isn’t better and costs aren’t in check, they are willing to embrace such new reimbursement…about 9% of U.S. acute care hospitals and 7% of skilled nursing facilities are voluntarily assuming financial risk by participating in the latest phase of the… Bundled Payments for Care Improvement Initiative…This means these providers have agreed — long before it’s mandated — to take on financial risk that they can provide the necessary quality medical care for one bundled fee, grouping all of the services involved in an episode.