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Washington, Oregon, Nevada and Colorado will share best practices for telehealth and remote patient monitoring, and follow their own state policies while also adhering to seven key principles, their governors say...Given their states' "significant individual and collective experience with telehealth," the governors say they'll work together to help "ensure that the nation benefits from our knowledge as changes to federal regulations are contemplated, to support continued application and availability of telehealth in our states, and to ensure that we address the inequities faced in particular by tribal communities and communities of color."...READ MORE
Access
Confidentiality
Equity
Standard-of-care requirements
Stewardship
Patient choice
Payment and reimbursement

The Patient Protection Commission plans to explore the issue of health care pricing transparency...specifically some sort of a proposal that would enhance “patient health care experience and state outcomes by implementing transparency measures that help understand data trends.” ...the commission’s work plan ...includes three potential suggestions ...required reporting of all medical claims, drug costs and hospital prices to the state; a database that makes that information accessible and digitally searchable; and a provision requiring hospital data to display the finer points of how their charges are negotiated...READ MORE

State officials presented to the Senate...$233 million in proposed cuts from the health care budget that will slash key programs for low-income Nevadans and significantly pare back mental health services to ease a budget crisis caused by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic...Many of the proposed cuts will roll back initiatives spearheaded by lawmakers and the Department of Health and Human Services over the last few legislative sessions in an effort to improve health care in the state, which ranks among the worst in the nation...The recommended reductions to the Department of Health and Human Services budget will, if approved, make up nearly 20 percent of the $1.2 billion shortfall projected by the governor’s office and more than 42 percent of the proposed $549 million in agency rate reductions...READ MORE

Nevada on Saturday reported a record daily increase of additional confirmed COVID-19 cases. But health officials later said the bulge largely resulted from laboratory data entry errors that delayed the posting of hundreds of cases from two previous days...The state Department of Health and Human Services reported an additional confirmed 1,099 cases, mostly from metro Las Vegas...The number of additional cases reported Saturday was more than double the previous record of 507 reported Thursday. Bur the Southern Nevada Health Agency said the reported daily increase included over 600 cases that should have been reported earlier in the week but were not...READ MORE

The planned introduction of a wide-ranging bill granting certain businesses enhanced immunity from COVID-19 related death or illness lawsuits has drawn the ire of officials from hospitals and other health care facilities, who say it unfairly opens them up to the threat of lawsuits...the enhanced liability protections envisioned in the bill would be granted to casino resorts, government agencies, nonprofits and other kinds of business while explicitly carving out health care facilities...That exemption...has drawn a sharp rebuke from the Nevada Hospital Association and other health care providers, who say it would prohibit them from transferring patients between facilities or prohibit visitors from coming to visit patients...READ MORE

New technology to disinfect N95 masks worn by health care workers is now in Nevada, but a major nurses union is questioning the effectiveness of the process...The Battelle Critical Care Decontamination System has been used to clean more than 1,700 of the N95 masks since early May. It uses vaporized hydrogen peroxide to kill the novel coronavirus, which causes the respiratory disease COVID-19...The new sanitization process is intended to make that equipment last even longer if necessary...Battelle says the system can clean a mask for up to 20 reuses, but National Nurses United, the country’s largest union of registered nurses, has repeatedly called for the process to be halted immediately...Union president Zenei Cortez wrote in a statement that union members reported their decontaminated masks came back deformed and their straps had lost elasticity. The masks’ ability to filter out dangerous particles depends on their snug facial fit...Similar concerns were also raised by a local hospital worker and member of the Nevada chapter of Service Employees International Union...READ MORE

Nearly one in five diabetes drugs and one in 20 asthma drugs experienced a significant price increase in the past year or two, with average one-year increases about 11.2 percent and 19.3 percent, respectively, according to the third annual drug pricing report released by the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services last week...The state identified 117 essential diabetes drugs and 13 essential asthma medications that had a significant price increase over the previous one or two years, meaning that their costs increased by more than the rate of medical inflation. Manufacturers attributed the price increases to a number of factors, including changes in marketplace dynamics, research and development and manufacturing cost...the findings of the report continued to be consistent with the results of the first two diabetes drug pricing reports...Here are some of the key findings of the report:...READ MORE

The Nevada Legislature approved immense cuts to the state’s health and education budgets on Sunday in an effort to rebalance the state budget amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and plummeting revenue projections...The revised budget passed through both the state Senate and Assembly after days and nights of deliberation in the part-time Legislature, which Gov. Steve Sisolak convened for an unscheduled special legislative session on July 8 to address a projected $1.2 billion revenue shortfall...The...plan cuts more than $500 million from the state budget, with the largest reductions hitting the Department of Health and Human Services and the K-12 education system. It cuts Medicaid reimbursement rates and specialty care programs and funding allocated to the state’s most underperforming schools...The state will use a combination of reserve funds and federal relief dollars to shore up the rest of the shortfall...Sisolak said in a statement he intends to sign the bill...READ MORE

Declining to Fill a Prescription

New CS Theft or Loss Reporting Form

Meal Periods and Break Periods

National Pharmacy Compliance News

FDA Releases MOU on Human Drug Compounding Regulation and Oversight

FDA Clarifies Compounding Rules, Offers Flexibility to Help Ease Drug Shortages During COVID-19 Pandemic

FDA Issues Updated Guidance for Compounding Pharmacies Experiencing PPE Shortages

HHS Expands Telehealth Access in Response to COVID-19

Criminals Found Posing as CDC Representatives to Steal Money and Information

Gov. Steve Sisolak and Gov. Brian Sandoval may have come from different political parties and approached governing in different ways, but the state’s most recent governors have at least one thing in common: a bone to pick with the state’s occupational licensing boards...in recent years, occupational boards have made headlines for various failures or misconduct, ranging from failure to conduct background checks on pharmacy wholesalers for more than a decade, hiring of spuriously-qualified lobbyists, ignoring directives on maximum salaries for state employees and making “salacious and false” accusations against the governor...Much of those failures can be attributed to structural deficiencies in how the state’s decentralized occupational licensing board system works...A major...audit from last year found “lacking” oversight of boards with “inconsistent…practices that may not comply with state guidelines,” and recommended moving all boards under the umbrella of the Department of Business and Industry, in order to have a standard clearinghouse for complaints, litigation and other similar activities...READ MORE