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Sara Belanger With The American Journal of Managed Care. Welcome to This Week in Managed Care from the Managed Markets News Network

Justin Gallagher, associate publisher of The American Journal of Managed Care. Welcome to This Week in Managed Care, From the Managed Markets News Network.

The National Association of Chain Drug Stores, in partnership with the Pharmacy Society of Wisconsin...announced plans to move forward with a new practice model to improve patient access to quality and efficient care, and advance pharmacy in a broader healthcare setting...The pilot project, "Advancing Community Pharmacy Quality: Leveraging Tech-Check-Tech to Expand Patient Care Services in Community Pharmacies," aims to promote better access to patient care. Specifically, the pilot will examine a new practice model that fosters collaboration across healthcare settings and employs an enhanced operational model. This new practice model holds promise in transforming the nation's healthcare system to deliver better access to clinical care by leveraging health care resources in a smarter way while ensuring patient safety and high operating standards...A key component of this model involves trained and validated pharmacy technicians completing the final check of a prescription filled by another technician, a pharmacy technician verification process known as tech-check-tech. This process allows pharmacists to reinvest the time saved by providing direct patient care services such as immunizations, disease state testing and medication therapy management, among others, which has a positive impact on overall patient outcomes...

Kelly Walsh, PTNN. This weekly video program provides our readers with an in-depth review of the latest news, product approvals, FDA rulings and more.

Kelly Walsh, PTNN. This weekly video program provides our readers with an in-depth review of the latest news, product approvals, FDA rulings and more.

Kelly Walsh, PTNN. This weekly video program provides our readers with an in-depth review of the latest news, product approvals, FDA rulings and more.

Not everyone reacts to the same medication in the same way...Benedryl makes some people drowsy and others wired. Antidepressants have no affect on 38 percent of patients...Some people are more susceptible to addiction from pain medications while others get pain relief without getting hooked...MD Labs is part of a new industry called pharmacogenetics that uses genetics to map specific genes involved in the metabolism of and response to specific drugs...Ruttledge and Denis Grizelj, co-founder and CEO, began MD Labs in 2011 as a toxicology testing facility for physicians nationwide. They expanded to pharmacogenetic testing in 2014, with the development of their proprietary genetic test Rxight, which maps genes that affect more than 200 medications...Because it’s genetically based, Rxight is a once-in-a-lifetime test...Preemptive testing makes the patient’s genetically-based profile of drug reactions available to doctors and pharmacists before illness strikes and before a drug is prescribed...MD Labs contracts with Saint Mary’s Health to offer the testing and consultation at both Saint Mary’s Regional Medical Center and Saint Mary’s Medical Group Primary Care Northwest Reno...Pharmacists at those locations are Rxight Certified to administer the test and provide consultation...Nationwide the company has 100-110 employees total, which includes about 55 people in the Reno office plus a sales force in offices in Chicago and Pennsylvania...MD Labs owners see a future in which pharmacogenetics testing is routine.

Does how a prescription for dermatologic medicine is written - either on paper or electronically—matter when it comes to whether patients will fill it and pick it up?...A new study...used data from a large, urban county health system to measure primary nonadherence—defined as not filling and picking up all dermatologic prescriptions within one year of the prescription date—and to study whether electronic prescribing impacted primary nonadherence...electronic prescribing increases the coordination between pharmacists and clinicians, less is known about how electronic prescribing affects the rate at which patients will fill or won't fill new prescriptions...The risk of primary nonadherence was 16 percentage points lower among patients given electronic prescriptions than patients given paper prescriptions...As the health care system transitions from paper prescriptions to directly routed e-prescriptions, it will be important to understand how that experience affects patients, particularly their likelihood of filling the prescriptions. Primary nonadherence is a common and pervasive problem. Steps should be taken to better understand why primary nonadherence happens and how it can be improved...

Justin Gallagher, associate publisher of The American Journal of Managed Care. Welcome to This Week in Managed Care, From the Managed Markets News Network...the top stories in managed care included HHS releasing the final rule for the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act, a commentary on the downside of drug coupons, and the World Health Organization called on countries to enact a soda tax.

Justin Gallagher, associate publisher of The American Journal of Managed Care. Welcome to This Week in Managed Care, From the Managed Markets News Network.