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Drug and device makers shelled out $3 billion to doctors and teaching hospitals in 2018, a 3.5% increase from the previous year, according to the Open Payments database published...by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services...Those payments include everything from royalties paid to teaching hospitals to physician speaking and consulting fees to free food and travel. The industry paid out an additional $4.93 billion for research and development...READ MORE

Despite significant improvements in the number of insured adults and children, Nevada ranked 48th in the nation for overall health care in a 2019 scorecard released by the Commonwealth Fund...The report scored the Silver State at 50th for access and affordability, 51st for prevention and treatment, 38th for avoidable hospital use and cost and 39th for the healthiness of its residents’ lifestyles. The only category in which the state outperformed the national average was in health care disparities — the gap between the level of care received between lower- and higher-income residents — at 24th...READ MORE

Nevada leads the nation in a dubious category — the rate of syphilis infections....The state’s rate of the primary and secondary form of the sexually transmitted disease was highest in the nation in 2017, and the rate of congenital syphilis, life-threatening infections spread to an infant during pregnancy, was second highest...It’s an alarming trend because syphilis, particularly the congenital form, is preventable, said the district’s chief health officer, Dr. Joe Iser. State law requires prenatal screening for the disease during the first and third trimesters of pregnancy...‘Totally unacceptable’...READ MORE

Critics often target physicians who receive money from pharma, but the exact influence those payments have on prescribing is up for debate. In oncology, at least, it’s not one-off payouts but consistent compensation that's most likely to sway prescribing behavior...the study showed that physicians who received payments over three consecutive years and tied to a specific drug boosted their prescriptions of that product. That pattern applied to oral drugs that treat lung cancer, kidney cancer and chronic myeloid leukemia...Among physicians who received payments from drug companies during only one year, no pattern emerged...

340B Health, which lobbies for hospitals that participate in the 340B Drug Pricing Program, recently issued an eye-opening member survey. It found that 340B Health’s member hospitals reported total 340B discounts of $15.3 billion...The 340B Health report also claims to show evidence that hospitals are properly using 340B funds...In reality, the report merely affirms that hospitals are spending money to meet their fundamental legal and statutory community benefit obligations. Any money from 340B discounts shouldn’t be double-counted to meet hospitals’ fundamental spending requirements...This latest report therefore again highlights the need for transparency and accountability to ensure that billions in 340B discounts are shared with the patients whose prescriptions generated those funds...READ MORE

Clark County Commission Chairwoman Marilyn Kirkpatrick pushed for more progress on the long-awaited UNLV School of Medicine building during a board meeting...The vexed commission chair expressed concern about project delays, saying her constituents haven’t gotten what was promised, including space for the UNLV Ackerman Autism Center. She asked for monthly updates to the commission’s management team...“I need more than a commitment. I need a hard date, a hard timeline, a hard communication expectation, because what I will tell you is that for me, I am super-frustrated with this whole thing,” Kirkpatrick said. “I have been waiting for financing for 10 years. That’s where we’re at.”...READ MORE

The Nevada Dispensary Association is responding to a recent state audit that was critical of the seed-to-sale tracking system the marijuana industry uses, noting that auditors did not find cannabis was diverted to or from the black market and suggesting that confusion over new software led to reporting errors...State auditors found frequent discrepancies between the amount of sales that are logged into the seed-to-sale tracking software METRC, and those reported on state tax returns. The association, which represents numerous marijuana businesses, did not comment...but provided a statement to The Nevada Independent about the findings this week...The audit suggested that with data incongruencies between the tax returns and the software, the state could have been losing out on $500,000 in tax revenue in a six-month period...READ MORE

A report from the EUIPO demonstrated that a shift in the focus of counterfeited goods to include pharmaceutical products has caused significant loss of sales and employment...The European Union Intellectual Property Office has released a report this month regarding 11 analysed sectors in the region, including the pharmaceutical industry...The European Union organisation found that all analysed sectors lost sales as a result infringement of intellectual property rights for a total of €92 bn ($106bn) between 2013 and 2916...the pharma industry suffered the second biggest loss of sales, at €16bn…READ MORE

The company (Intel) says algorithms can simplify trials and accelerate time to market for new drugs...Efforts to implement artificial intelligence, advanced analytics and machine learning could have multiple applications for the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries...The report, “Harnessing AI and Analytics to Drive Digital Transformation,” comes as health systems across the country are working to deploy advanced data analytics to provide faster care for their patients...AI-based algorithms can optimize clinical trial design by eliminating testing criteria that increases time but has a minimal impact on the overall effectiveness of what is being tested...READ MORE

Drug manufacturers earned an average of $1.58 in profit for every $1 they spent on the production and administration of diabetes drugs in 2017, according to a report released by the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services...But the diabetes drug report...found wide variations in the profitability of drugs used to treat diabetes based on data provided by manufacturers to the state. Although some drug companies reported losses, 69 percent reported of manufacturer reports indicated profits greater than the combined cost of production and administrative expenditures, including some with profits more than 20 times combined costs...The long-awaited report comes nearly two years after lawmakers passed a bill requiring manufacturers of diabetes drugs and PBMs to submit annual reports to the state detailing the costs associated with those drugs and explaining any price increases. The first report based on that information was initially slated to be released in September...READ MORE