Category:

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

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

Gov. Steve Sisolak announced casinos could reopen June 4. Then the Nevada Gaming Control Board updated its health and safety policy, which outlines requirements aimed at preventing the spread of COVID-19. Gaming companies quickly followed suit and unveiled which of their properties would be reopening along with some of the steps they’re taking to protect both workers and guests...But the process hasn’t appeased the powerful Culinary Workers Union Local 226, which represents roughly 60,000 employees who work in casinos-resort properties as guest room attendants, cooks, porters, baristas, bartenders and cashiers, among other roles...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

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

A majority of Nevada doctors believe they can only keep their doors open for another two to six months unless the volume of patients trickling back into their offices significantly increases, according to a new survey from the American Medical Association...Ten percent of physicians in Nevada reported layoffs, 15 percent reported pay cuts, 20 percent reported temporary furloughs and 30 percent reported a reduction in staff hours, while 55 percent reported none of those changes, according to preliminary results from the survey, which Dr. Ron Swanger, president of the Nevada State Medical Association, presented to the Patient Protection Commission...READ MORE

Leaders of a rural Nevada church are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to suspend the state’s 50-person cap on religious gatherings while an appellate court considers their claim that COVID-19 restrictions treating casinos and others more leniently violate their constitutional right to freely exercise their beliefs...Gov. Steve Sisolak’s June 4 directive allowing casinos, restaurants, bowling alleys and amusement parks to reopen at 50% of capacity while maintaining a hard cap for church services “simply turns the First Amendment on its head,” lawyers for Calvary Chapel Dayton Valley wrote in the request to the high court for an emergency injunction...“The Free Exercise Clause protects the exercise of religion. No constitutional provision protects the right to gamble at casinos, eat at restaurants, or frolic at indoor amusement parks,” they said...READ MORE

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

Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak has touted open government as a crucial aspect to the state’s response to the COVID-19 outbreak. “You deserve transparency,” he proclaimed during an April 8 news conference, a statement reflecting the Nevada Public Records Act’s promise of open access to most government documents...But records vital to evaluating how Sisolak’s administration and state agencies have navigated the unprecedented emergency have proved difficult to obtain...Even a simple request for daily reports on hospital capacity made in early April, which would have spanned only a few pages at the time, was met with a response from a senior policy analyst in Sisolak’s office to wait “eight to 10 weeks” to receive the record...Among the requested documents that state agencies have delayed in producing or denied access to are the following:

■ Emergency management plans related to disease outbreaks or widespread health emergencies. Officials took more than 40 days to deny the request.

■ Documents tracking testing of prison inmates and staff for COVID-19. Denied by officials after 13 days.

■ Written communications among top prison officials about COVID-19 testing. Officials said they would respond “in the next 45 days.”

■ Records related to Nevada’s government stockpile of personal protective gear for medical workers. Officials said it will take “eight to ten weeks or longer” to compile the documents....READ MORE