- Amazon gains wholesale pharmacy licenses in multiple states (stltoday.com)
Throughout the past year, and without much fanfare, Amazon.com Inc. has gained approval to become a wholesale distributor from a number of state pharmaceutical boards...It’s unclear, though, whether the regulatory filings support speculation that the e-commerce giant is planning a move into the prescription drug delivery business, territory currently dominated by a handful of companies...Industry analysts in recent weeks have raised the possibility that Amazon was eyeing this lucrative new business, posing a potential threat to such companies as north St. Louis County-based Express Scripts Holding Co...According to a review of records by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Amazon has received approval for wholesale pharmacy licenses in at least 12 states, including Nevada, Arizona, North Dakota, Louisiana, Alabama, New Jersey, Michigan, Connecticut, Idaho, New Hampshire, Oregon and Tennessee....
- Walgreens to shutter 600 stores (bizjournals.com)Walgreens pulls off solid quarter, at time when pharmacy and retail are suffering (secure.marketwatch.com)
Walgreens said Wednesday that it will shutter 600 stores early next year following its $4.4 billion Rite Aid deal...The closures will be mostly Rite Aid stores, but may include some Walgreens locations...The company plans to shut down stores within a mile of another Walgreens or Rite Aid location. The closings will start next spring and will continue over an 18-month period...The move is expected to cost Walgreens $450 million, but should save the Deerfield, Illinois-based company $300 million yearly by 2020...In September, the Walgreens Boots Alliance received regulatory approval to buy 1,900 Rite Aid stores from the Pennsylvania-based drugstore chain. The deal will make Walgreens the country's largest retail pharmacy by store locations. Walgreens now has more than 13,200 stores worldwide...The company said it expects to complete integration of the acquired stores within three years at an estimated cost of approximately $750 million.
- Gilead wins US approval for CAR-T cancer therapy (biopharmadive.com)
Gilead Sciences Inc….secured U.S. approval for its newly acquired CAR-T therapy, giving adult patients with a certain type of lymphoma and few other options a promising new treatment that offers the hope of remission for some...The regulatory OK...puts Gilead at the forefront of cancer cell therapy development and validates the biotech's decision to buy the drug's original developer, Kite Pharma Inc...Gilead will market the therapy under the brand name Yescarta (axicabatagene ciloleucel) at an annual cost of $373,000 — a price that underscores the affordability challenges presented by the personalized nature of CAR-T treatment…Throughout the development of Yescarta, Kite stayed neck and neck with the larger and well-resourced Novartis AG. While Novartis can claim the landmark of winning the first ever approval of a CAR-T therapy, Gilead's near $12 billion takeover of Kite is a worthy second prize.
- Week in Review: October 20, 2017 (pharmacytimes.com)
PTNN, This weekly video program provides our readers with an in-depth review of the latest news, product approvals, FDA rulings and more.
- CVS makes more than $66 billion bid for Aetna: sources (reuters.com)
U.S. pharmacy operator CVS Health Corp has made an offer to acquire No. 3 U.S. health insurer Aetna Inc for more than $200 per share, or over $66 billion...A deal would merge one of the nation’s largest pharmacy benefits managers and pharmacy operators with one of its oldest health insurers, whose far-reaching business ranges from employer healthcare to government plans nationwide...Aetna shares rose more than 11 percent, or $18.48, to $178.60, while CVS shares fell 3 percent, or $2.22, to $73.31...A tie-up with Aetna could give CVS more leverage in its price negotiations with drug makers. But it would also subject it to more antitrust scrutiny...The deal could also help counter pressure on CVS’s stock following speculation that Amazon.com Inc is preparing to enter the drug prescription market, using its vast e-commerce platform to take market share from traditional pharmacies...
- Project ECHO Expands Rural and Urban Clinics in Nevada (med.unr.edu)
Thousands of Nevadans have limited access to specialty health care, including the nearly 300,000 living in rural areas and many others living in urban centers who have no health insurance or Medicaid coverage. To help remedy this issue, the University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine Office of Statewide Initiatives has expanded Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) with new clinics in cardiology, pediatric endocrinology, medication assisted therapy for substance use disorder, as well as a unique school-based behavioral health program...Project ECHO uses teleconferencing technology to connect specialists at UNR Med with primary care clinicians in rural and urban under-served communities...These virtual clinics give primary care physicians, advanced practice registered nurses, physician assistants and other professionals the tools and resources to deliver high quality care in their communities...The impact is enormous...The work...has been transformative in providing critical rural outreach and health care to patients who otherwise would be without. Their work is changing the face of rural health care in the state of Nevada and is a model for delivering access to health care in efficient and affordable ways...
- Pharmacist’s ‘deadly’ choices sparked U.S. meningitis outbreak: prosecutors (reuters.com)
A federal prosecutor told jurors...that a Massachusetts pharmacist gambled with patients’ lives by making drugs in unsafe ways that led to a deadly 2012 fungal meningitis outbreak, but a defense lawyer said he was no murderer...Glenn Chin, a former supervisory pharmacist at New England Compounding Center, made drugs in filthy conditions, producing mold-tainted steroids in the process...Those steroids were shipped out to healthcare facilities nationally and then injected into patients, leading to an outbreak that sickened 778 people, including 76 people who died…“Make no mistake, Glenn Chin is not sitting in this court room because he was negligent or careless,”... “He is here because of his deliberate choices.”...Chin directed “massive corner cutting” in...NECC’s so-called clean rooms where the drugs were made, prioritizing production over cleaning and failing to properly test or sterilize drugs.
- U.S. to promote use of opioid alternatives to treat addiction (reuters.com)
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration plans to encourage widespread use among opioid addicts of less harmful opioid drugs such as methadone and buprenorphine, a radical shift in policy that could draw opposition from those in the addiction field who believe abstinence is the only effective treatment...FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb outlined a proposal under which every addict who suffers a non-fatal overdose would be treated with an opioid substitute, for long periods if necessary, or even for life...“I know this may make some people uncomfortable,” Gottlieb said...“FDA will join efforts to break the stigma associated with medications used for addiction treatment.”...The FDA, Gottlieb said, will issue guidance for drugmakers to promote the development of new addiction treatments and lay out the agency’s interest in “novel, non-abstinence-based” products...
- The U.S. Opioid Crisis Hits Tasmania’s Poppy Farmers (bloomberg.com)
Australia provides half of the world’s legal supply of raw opiate, but demand and prices are tumbling...With the U.S. imposing stricter rules on the use of painkillers, demand for the raw material has tumbled. Poppy growers in Tasmania have responded by scaling back or giving up on the crop altogether. The state is the source of about half of global supply, thanks to a 1971 agreement with the Commonwealth of Australia that granted it a decades-long monopoly on poppy cultivation...Tasmanian farmers...are reeling from the impact of government and corporate efforts to stem the abuse of prescription painkillers and their illegal knockoffs. The volume of opioid-based medicines prescribed in the U.S. has dropped 28 percent since 2012 following moves by the Drug Enforcement Agency to tighten access...The prescription branded-opioid market is at its lowest point in almost a decade...Tasmania is facing more competition: Three states on the Australian mainland have eased restrictions on poppy growing in recent years...As they wait for a rebound in demand, Tasmania’s poppy farmers need to focus on becoming more efficient...Some growers have managed to boost their yields to an average of about 40 kilograms of active raw material per hectare, up from 25 kilograms five years ago...It is a really, really tough marketplace out there, and it doesn’t look like it’s improving...The only thing at the present time to make it viable is increasing productivity...
- This Week in Managed Care: October 20, 2017 (ajmc.com)
Kelly Davio, welcome to This Week in Managed Care from the Managed Markets News Network