- Eldorado Resorts Opens Family Medical Center (ktvn.com)
Eldorado Resorts Properties teamed up with Activate Healthcare to open a family medical center inside the Circus Circus on the corner of Sixth and West Streets (Reno)...All full-time employees of the Eldorado, Silver Legacy and Circus Circus can pop in to see a doctor for general health care needs. The nearly 4,500 square-foot clinic includes three exam rooms, a pharmacy and patient resource center. Patients will not have to wait weeks to see a doctor either; they are guaranteed an appointment within 24-hours. "We’re trying to get people out of the emergency rooms and into their primary physicians which will create a healthier environment, which will be a healthier employee, which will be a healthier family and community,” explains Cindy Carano, the Executive Director of Community Relations for Eldorado Resorts, Inc.
- European countries offer goodies in bid to win EMA after Brexit (fiercepharma.com)
Even before European officials present the groundwork for relocating the bloc’s drug regulator, a fight has emerged between countries vying for the economic lift and status that come with hosting the authority, using perks like child care as ammo...Some 20 countries in Europe hope to host the European Medicines Agency after the U.K.’s vote to leave the union last summer...And even though the EU hasn’t announced its official criteria for the move, the countries aren’t hesitating to make their case by showcasing local lifestyle perks and more...Countries in Europe are offering language lessons, local scenery and child care as they push to win the EMA, according to the news service. They’re seeking to attract an agency that could bring an economic lift worth an estimated €1 billion and employs about 900 experts.
- HHS Secretary Pushes to Cut FDA Appropriations, Replace With More Industry Fees (raps.org)
Secretary of Health and Human Services...Tom Price is continuing to push the Senate to further increase the industry fees paid to the US Food and Drug Administration...which would upend the agreed-to amounts negotiated by FDA and industry for the next five years, and allow for further cuts to the agency’s congressional appropriations...the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions committee advanced a bill reauthorizing the user fee programs for prescription drug, medical device, generic drug and biosimilar industries without the additional fees that President Donald Trump requested in his budget blueprint for the next fiscal year...The fees included in the bill were what both sides negotiated for PDUFA VI, MDUFA IV, GDUFA II and BsUFA II...Price wrote in a letter...to Sen. Patty Murray, the ranking member of the HELP committee: "To ensure the FDA has the critical resources needed to keep pace with this field, the President's Budget Blueprint proposes to increase and restructure the medical product user fee programs at FDA to be 100 percent user fee supported programs, with no funding triggers that require budget authority financing."...
- This Week in Managed Care: May 19, 2017 (ajmc.com)
Laura Joszt, assistant managing editor at The American Journal of Managed Care. Welcome to This Week in Managed Care from the Managed Markets News Network
- No scandal here, say rare disease drugmakers, as pricing scrutiny lands on their doorstep (fiercepharma.com)
Rare disease drugmakers get that their typically high prices are under the lens these days—just like everyone else’s. But they don’t all necessarily agree that the scrutiny is fair...Shire CEO Flemming Ornskov...understands why the field has landed in the pricing spotlight, he doesn’t think it belongs there…list prices that would have flown just a couple years back have become unacceptable in the public eye. Rare-disease drugmakers’ go-to pricing justifications—that their meds are innovative and used by few patients, meaning they're not too big a hit on payers—are no longer getting it done...Gamida Cell...thinks Nicord—its candidate stem cell treatment for blood cancer patients—can "support a justification for a higher price,"…it’s the med’s cost-saving potential that will ultimately "dictate the pricing,"...
- The 340B Program Hits $16.2 Billion in 2016; Now 5% of U.S. Drug Market (drugchannels.net)
The 340B Drug Pricing Program’s explosive growth continues...discounted sales hit $16.2 billion in 2016. That’s a 34% increase over the 2015 figure. Consequently, the 340B program accounted for 5.0% of the total U.S. drug market in 2016...Covered entities are generating billions in untraceable profits from this fast-growing program. Hospitals, which make up the vast majority of 340B purchases, should be required to account clearly for the billions the program provides them...Some hospitals have published high-level descriptions of how they spend 340B funds, but none of the articles fully accounts for the billions of dollars in 340B profits. Much more transparency is required, because the dollars are very large and growing very quickly…Given the program's rapid growth and its channel distortions, Congress urgently needs to refocus the program on genuine safety-net providers and financially needy patients.
- Drugs approved with limited data aren’t always well-tested later (reuters.com)
New medicines that win U.S. marketing approval without conclusive evidence of their effectiveness aren't always proven to work after they go on sale, a recent research review suggests...Researchers focused on medicines approved for sale based on single pivotal trials or based on what's known as "surrogate markers," such as lab tests and signs of risk for disease such as cholesterol levels instead of true clinical outcomes like heart attacks or deaths. Many times no follow-up studies were published after these medicines went on sale, and when studies were published they often continued to rely on surrogate markers to suggest potential effectiveness...speeding up the approval process increases our collective uncertainty about drugs' benefits and safety...This exposes patients to risks - the risk that they are spending their resources on therapies that do not work as well as expected as well as the possibility that they are taking drugs that have underlying safety risks that have not yet been figured out… researchers examined published studies of 117 medicines approved for treating 123 medical conditions by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration...based on either a single pivotal trial or on trials that relied on surrogate endpoints...no follow-up studies were published for 43 of the 123 approved indications, or 35 percent...
- Nevada Senate Passes Insulin-Price Bill Tough on Drugmakers (lasvegas.cbslocal.com)
A bid in Nevada to force America’s three insulin manufacturers to turn over information on the...prices of...hormone treatment for people with diabetes advanced with bipartisan support...The Democratic (Democrat) proposal has transitioned from a first-of-its-kind price control to a measure focused on pricing transparency...it retains what would be some of the toughest regulations on pharmaceutical companies in the nation...It would require drugmakers to annually publish the list prices they set and profits they make on insulin, as well as the total amount of insulin discounts they give market middlemen — specific data points currently largely kept confidential...Some pharmaceutical companies, including insulin-maker Sanofi SA, have voluntarily released recent data on their price increases...Market experts say transparency alone won’t lower patient costs...
- Study: One-third of docs trust pharma content on HCP sites (mmm-online.com)
Only 34% of physicians find pharmaceutical content on HCP (healthcare professional)sites to be trustworthy, according to a new study by Decision Resources Group's Manhattan Research...We found that pharma is missing the mark when it comes to providing online content that physicians need in an easy-to-use way...DRG...surveyed 2,784 U.S. physicians in more than 26 specialties and found that only 27% of them viewed pharmaceutical websites as credible sources of professional information, compared to 77% of them who viewed third-party HCP-facing websites credible...62% of the physicians surveyed said that the information they get from drugmakers on third-party sites such as HCP sites and online journals “are always ads.”...What physicians need are resources for patient education, scientific information on drugs to help them make better treatment decisions, and continuing medical education, said Arnold. Seventy percent of physicians said it's crucial for drugmakers to provide educational resources rooted in science to gain their trust, yet half of them agree that no drugmakers are providing quality scientific online...
- G20 health ministers agree to tackle antibiotics resistance (reuters.com)
Health ministers of the G20 leading economies…agreed to work together to tackle issues such as a growing resistance to antibiotics and to start implementing national action plans by the end of 2018...Germany...said it was an "important breakthrough" that all nations had agreed to address the problem and work towards obligatory prescriptions for antibiotics...Saying that globalisation caused infectious diseases to spread more quickly than previously, the 20 nations also pledged to strengthen health systems and improve their ability to react to pandemics and other health risks..."By putting global health on the agenda of the G20 we affirm our role in strengthening the political support for existing initiatives and working to address the economic aspects of global health issues,"...