- What Is URAC Community Pharmacy Accreditation? (pharmacytimes.com)
According to URAC (Utilization Review Accreditation Commission), an independent accreditor that establishes benchmarks and standards for pharmacy practice, any "duly licensed pharmacy in good standing within the jurisdiction of its practice that has at least 1 retail location handling prescription intake and dispensing as well as providing and reporting outcomes on medication therapy management and drug therapy management is the type of organization that applies for URAC Community Pharmacy accreditation."...To earn this accreditation, CVS/pharmacy underwent a rigorous evaluation that validated the quality of the patient care and services it provides, including medication therapy management, wellness services, patient counseling and education, and preventive and chronic disease management...community pharmacy standards assessed by URAC include quality measures reporting, quality management and performance oversight, and pharmacy structure, operations, and drug utilization management..."Having a widely recognized and respected accreditation organization such as URAC independently scrutinize our operation and attest to the quality of the pharmacy care and services we provide demonstrates our continued commitment to helping people on their path to better health as a leader in the healthcare industry," Josh Flum, senior vice president of retail pharmacy at CVS Caremark..."Other URAC Pharmacy Quality Management accreditation programs include specialty pharmacy, mail service pharmacy, drug therapy management, pharmacy benefit management, and workers’ compensation pharmacy benefit management.
- Europe launches new fast approval scheme for promising drugs (reuters.com)PRIME: priority medicines (ema.europa.eu)
European regulators launched a new scheme...to speed the approval of promising new drugs that address unmet medical needs by offering enhanced support to medicine developers as they work on clinical trials...The European Medicines Agency's initiative called PRIME, which stands for PRIority MEdicines, is the latest example of regulators on both sides of the Atlantic working to evaluate truly innovative drugs more swiftly than in the past...The European agency said it expected around 100 applications a year for its new PRIME scheme, which aims to foster better planning of medicine development to help companies generate the data needed for approval more rapidly...Experimental drugs accepted into the program will get continuous support from an EMA expert, who will be appointed early in the process and provide guidance on overall development plans and regulatory strategy.
- NHS to help design 10 ‘healthy new towns’ (pharmatimes.com)
NHS England is helping to design 10 ‘healthy new towns’ across the country alongside Public Health England, in the hope of developing new solutions to key healthcare challenges such as obesity and dementia...Under the plans, more than 76,000 new homes with potential capacity for around 170,000 residents will be built - with funding from local councils and the private sector - in environments specifically set up to address 21st century health needs...NHS England said it will bring together renowned clinicians, designers and technology experts to reimagine the delivery of healthcare in residential areas, "to showcase what’s possible by joining up design of the built environment with modern health and care services, and to deploy new models of technology-enabled primary care"...Ideas to be tested include fast food-free zones near schools, safe and appealing green spaces, dementia-friendly streets and digital access to GP services...The move comes as the number of working days lost in Britain due to ill health reaches 130 million, while physical inactivity is a direct factor in one in six deaths and has an overall economic impact of £7.4 billion ($10.5 billion)...
- Endo to declare Opana ER addiction risks to settle opioid probe by NY (fiercepharma.com)
States across the country have been chasing painkiller makers, alleging all kinds of bad behavior in the sales and marketing of opioids. Now one of those cases has stuck, with Endo agreeing to not soft-pedal the risks of taking Opana ER (oxymorphone), or oversell its crush resistance as conditions of settling an investigation in New York...Endo Health Solutions also agreed to pay $200,000 and take a variety of steps to make sure doctors understand the addiction risks to their patients. The company will also stop marketing to and report any physicians they think might be improperly prescribing the opioid...the AG's (Attorney General Eric Schneiderman) investigation focused on Opana ER, which he said had become the drug of choice among many abusers...the investigation found that Endo "improperly marketed Opana ER as designed to be crush resistant," providing a "false sense of security to health care providers and their patients," even though Endo's own studies showed the drug could be crushed and ground up...
- Wal-Mart says some pharmacy client data was visible to others online (cnbc.com)
Wal-Mart Stores said...prescription history and other basic information on a few thousand online U.S. pharmacy customers may have been visible to other users during a four-day stretch last month due to a coding mistake...We had a software coding error for a 72-hour period from February 15 to 18 that affected a limited group of online pharmacy customers...We moved quickly to fix the issue once it was discovered...The error happened during the migration of servers and was not a hack...Fewer than 5,000 users were potentially affected, a small percentage of the number of people who logged in during the 72-hour period...Wal-Mart is contacting potentially impacted customers directly and is offering them identity protection services...
- Bass associate accuses PTO officials of bias against their pharma patent crusade (fiercepharma.com)
Hedge funder Kyle Bass and his Coalition for Affordable Drugs has been somewhat successful at using a new type of patent challenge to push review of "questionable" drug patents. But Bass' partner in that effort now says he doesn't trust the Patent & Trademark Office to be impartial in making those decisions...Erich Spangenberg, in an article at IPWatchdog, says PTO chief Michelle Lee and her staff have favored pharma since Bass announced last year that he and his group would target pharma patents via the inter partes review process...according to the documents, Lee and other PTO officials sat down with the industry association BIO...Bass and Spangenberg themselves called and emailed repeatedly to request a similar meeting, and they're still waiting... It's an outrage that Ms. Lee is showing incredible bias by granting meetings to the people that are gouging American patients, consumers and taxpayers and denying the same access to the people who are attempting to end this abuse...Some analysts have criticized the coalition for targeting inconsequential patents that aren't likely to change the length of a company's monopoly hold on the market, while profiting from shorting the shares of the same company. In a PTO filing, the coalition has acknowledged that Bass and his group don't have altruistic motives, but maintains that his profit motives "do not change the social value of his activities."...
- FDA still struggling with backlog of generic drug applications (statnews.com)
Under pressure to speed approval of generic medicines, the Food and Drug Administration...released data to defend its progress...the statistics indicate the agency is making headway, there are also clear signs the FDA continues to struggle with the workload...the number of full and tentative drug approvals has been rising each month since last April and reached 99 this past December...the agency also appears to be doing a better job of communicating with generic drug makers about their applications...Generic drug approval is gaining more attention thanks to the intensifying national debate over the rising cost of prescription medicines. Although prices have also risen for some of these copycat medicines, generics remain...lower-cost alternatives to brand-name drugs. And generics now account for 88 percent of all prescriptions written...The FDA is being a little disingenuous saying its backlog is almost cleared...The FDA faces...the increasingly large number of applications that drug makers are submitting...more than 4,000 have been filed in the past four years...the FDA workload will not abate...The upshot is that the rate at which new generics will find their way to pharmacy shelves is unclear — and that adds further uncertainty for health care budgets...
- AHA: Too Many Errors With Smartphone Blood Pressure App (physiciansbriefing.com)Validation of the Instant Blood Pressure Smartphone App (archinte.jamanetwork.com)
A popular smartphone app that measures blood pressure is inaccurate, missing high blood pressure readings in four out of every five patients tested, according to a research letter published online March 2 in JAMA Internal Medicine...The investigators found that, on average, the app was 12 points off for systolic and 10 points off for diastolic blood pressure. The team also found that 77.5 percent of patients with hypertensive blood pressure, defined as 140/90 mm Hg, showed normal blood pressure with the app...If someone with high blood pressure is using Instant Blood Pressure to follow their blood pressure at home, more times than not it's going to tell them they're fine...
- McKesson to acquire Rexall Health from Katz Group (drugstorenews.com)
McKesson announced...its agreement to acquire Rexall Health from Katz Group for $3 billion Canadian ($2.2 billion in U.S. dollars). The acquisition is expected to strengthen McKesson’s position in Canada’s pharmaceutical supply chain...McKesson intends to acquire Rexall Health’s business, including approximately 470 retail pharmacies. Rexall Health will help McKesson leverage its existing portfolio of assets to drive growth along the entire value chain...The acquisition of Rexall Health supports McKesson’s commitment to drive value in the industry by improving healthcare solutions delivered in the pharmacy; it enhances our ability to provide best-in-class pharmacy care through an expanded retail footprint...The transaction is subject to review under the Investment Canada Act and by the Competition Bureau of Canada...
- Resolution passed supporting designated trauma center at Centennial Hills Hospital (reviewjournal.com)
Las Vegas City Council narrowly passed a resolution Wednesday supporting the addition of a designated trauma center at Centennial Hills Hospital Medical Center, drawing criticism from the company that operates the other applicant hospitals...Centennial Hills, part of the Valley Health System, is one of three applicants being considered for designation as a Level 3 trauma center by the Southern Nevada Health District Board of Health, which meets March 24...MountainView Hospital and Southern Hills Hospital and Medical Center, owned by the Hospital Corporation of America, are the other two applicants. Level 3 is the lowest level of designated trauma center recognized by the Southern Nevada Trauma System...Though the City Council isn’t involved in designations, Councilman Bob Beers, who leads the Board of Health, brought the resolution before the council for a vote of symbolic support.