- Year in review: Advocating for provider status legislation (pharmacist.com)The Expanding Role of Pharmacists in a Transformed Health Care System (nga.org)
The campaign to pass the Pharmacy and Medically Underserved Areas Enhancement Act (H.R. 592/S. 314) made major strides in 2015. The legislation enables patient access to, and coverage for, Medicare Part B services by state-licensed pharmacists in medically underserved communities. H.R. 592 was reintroduced in the House of Representatives in January 2015… a companion bill, S. 314, was introduced in the Senate...APhA continued its leadership role in growing support for the legislation. PharmacistsProvideCare.com, APhA’s website dedicated to the campaign on provider status, was revamped with information, resources, and tools to help pharmacists advocate to elected officials, policy makers, and decision makers…At the state level, 94 bills—three times as many as last year—were introduced to address patient access to pharmacists’ care. Sixteen bills were introduced on the definition of pharmacists as providers; 53 bills were introduced addressing scope of practice issues, including collaborative practice agreements; and 25 bills were introduced on payment for services. In January, the National Governors Association issued a report recognizing the value pharmacists provide in improving public health and urging states to "consider actions to expand pharmacists’ scope of practice." In April, North Dakota passed a series of measures increasing opportunities for pharmacists and their patients. Other states like Washington and Oregon followed suit..."Our goal in 2016 is to keep the momentum going,"…."In addition to success at the state level, we hope to see continued progress on federal legislation."
- American Pharmacists Association Announces Recipients of 2016 Awards and Honors (pharmacist.com)
The American Pharmacists Association... announced the selection of the 2016 Awards and Honors Program recipients. Honorees will be officially recognized at the APhA Annual Meeting and Exposition in Baltimore, Maryland, March 4-7, 2016. The APhA awards and honors program is the most comprehensive recognition program in the profession of pharmacy.
American Pharmacists Association – Profession-Wide Awards:
- Leslie Z. Benet, BSPharm, PhD: Remington Honor Medal - Highest Honor in Pharmacy
- Bruce R. Canaday, PharmD, FASHP, FAPhA: Hugo H. Schaefer Award
- Larry D. Wagenknecht, BSPharm, FMPA, FAPhA: Hubert H. Humphrey Award
- Nicki Hilliard, PharmD, MHSA, BCNP, FAPhA: Good Government Pharmacist-of-the-Year Award
- Kristen G. Betts, BHS: Honorary Membership
- Jean Paul Gagnon, PhD: Honorary President
- Michael A. Moné, BSPharm, JD, FAPhA: Gloria Niemeyer Francke Leadership Mentor Award
- The Kroger Co.: H.A.B. Dunning Award
- Ronald A. Nosek, Jr., BSPharm, MS, FASHP: Distinguished Federal Pharmacist Award
- Veronica Vernon, PharmD, BCPS, BCACP, NCMP: Distinguished New Practitioner Award
- Margie E. Snyder, PharmD, MPH: Community Pharmacy Residency Excellence in Precepting Award
- Jeffrey Bratberg, PharmD, BCPS: Generation Rx Award of Excellence
- McKesson introduces clinical programs platform (chaindrugreview.com)
McKesson Pharmacy Systems & Automation has released the McKesson Clinical Programs Solution, a new platform that enables pharmacists to build customized wellness programs...the Clinical Programs Solution also allows pharmacists to maintain vendor programs for patients with specific medical conditions and saves time and labor costs by automatically synchronizing the data of patients enrolled in a clinical program with McKesson’s EnterpriseRx pharmacy management system...The Clinical Programs Solution offers a wide range of program management capabilities, including a patient-centric view of a patient’s programs and information, real-time notification if a patient is eligible for a clinical program when a prescription is being filled with EnterpriseRx, and a central platform for pharmacies with multiple locations to manage all of their clinical programs.
- Medical Students Offer Free Clinic at UNR (kolotv.com)
The Student Outreach Clinic at the University of Nevada, Reno has been around for 20 years. Yet, there's still a lot of people that don't know about it. The clinic provides free health care to patients, regardless of their ability to pay. So, whether you have insurance or not, you won't have to pay out of pocket in most cases. If you do have to pay for a visit, it's usually a minimal fee...the problem for people here locally is that...We are really under-doctored in northern Nevada in most specialty areas, especially in the primary care area. So, getting in to a physician may be something that's really difficult to do," he says...The entire clinic is run by students, most of which are in their first or second year of medical school, which means they're getting valuable hands-on experience that they wouldn't otherwise get.
- U.S. appeals court ruling may clear barrier to generic OxyContin (reuters.com)
A federal appeals court ruled Monday that four patents related to Purdue Pharma's painkiller OxyContin are invalid, potentially bringing Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd and others a step closer to introducing generic versions of the drug...Purdue had sued Teva, Amneal Pharmaceuticals, Epic Pharma and a U.S. arm of Mylan NV after they sought approval from the Food and Drug Administration to make generic OxyContin...Despite the court's ruling, Purdue has several other patents protecting OxyContin, and we do not anticipate generic manufacturers selling the product in the near future...Three of the patents Purdue sought to enforce in its lawsuits are related to an improved formulation of oxycodone, the active ingredient in OxyContin...The other patent describes technology designed to prevent abuse of the drug by making it difficult to crush and causing it to form a gel when dissolved in water so that it cannot be injected...Purdue appealed all four cases to the Federal Circuit...
- U.S. charges drug researchers with sending trade secrets to China, but will case stand up? (sciencemag.org)Scientists Indicted For Allegedly Stealing Biopharmaceutical Trade Secrets (justice.gov)
Attorneys are urging caution in evaluating the strength of a U.S. trade secrets case against two GlaxoSmithKline scientists who were accused last week of transferring trade secrets to China. The case bears some similarities, they say, to other recent cases involving Chinese American or Chinese defendants in which federal prosecutors abruptly dropped charges because of improper analysis or insufficient evidence...Last week, federal prosecutors in Philadelphia...announced the indictments of biomedical researchers Yu Xue and Lucy Xi, as well as three associates, for trade secrets theft, wire fraud, and other charges. The scientists stand accused of emailing and downloading proprietary data about GSK products and sending it to contacts working for the Chinese startup Renopharma, which provides contract research services for early drug discovery...The case comes on the heels of several high-profile investigations into Chinese or Chinese American scientists in which prosecutors have abruptly dropped charges, sparking accusations of racial profiling. This past September, prosecutors dropped charges against Xiaoxing Xi, the interim chair of Temple University’s physics department, after experts submitted affidavits suggesting that his alleged crimes were merely standard scientific collaborations.
- Does Marketing Have Too Much Control In Big Pharma Clinical Trials? (forbes.com)
The title of this recent article really says it all: "Characterisation of trials where marketing purposes have been influential in study design: a descriptive study." The authors’ entering hypothesis essentially is that many of Big Pharma’s clinical trials are designed solely for marketing purposes with the trial designs themselves governed by people whose sole concern is drug sales and not the health of patients...Currently, there are few documented examples of marketing trials. Nonetheless, there are reasons why marketing trials should be of concern to patients and physicians. Notably, the research objectives–to promote the use of a medical product–may not be clear to investigators and communicated to participants. The features that suggest a trial may be considered as marketing are, however, currently unclear.
- Vested interests, recruitment of investigators who are frequent prescribers of competing products;
- disproportionally high payments given to investigators;
- sponsorship by the company’s sales and marketing division;
- minimal requirements for data leading to poor data quality
- recruitment of a large number of centres
- Drugmaker Abbott to buy Alere for $5.8 bln (cnbc.com)
Drugmaker Abbott Laboratories said it would acquire Alere for $5.8 billion in a deal that would expand its diagnostics business and make it a leader in point-of-care testing...Point-of-care tests help increase the speed of treatment by bringing test results to doctors in a matter of minutes as they can be conducted in the physician's office, an ambulance or even at home...Alere, which has annual sales of $2.5 billion, makes tests for infections such as HIV, tuberculosis, malaria and dengue...Abbott, which had annual sales of $20.4 billion in 2015, said its total diagnostics sales would exceed $7 billion after the close of the deal...Alere's net debt, currently $2.6 billion, will be assumed or refinanced by Abbott.
- Key to predictive analytics in population health: planning and flexibility (healthcareitnews.com)
Curation and quality are essential, because if the data isn’t right it can wreak more harm than good…While the development of accurate predictive analytics has the potential to head off debilitating and costly conditions among patients...it’s important not to rush in without the proper planning...The first thing to understand is you need to have the right technical infrastructure components in place and it has to address what you are looking to do with it...Is the data you have good enough to even do predictive analytics? Because if it isn't, that prediction may actually harm you more than it helps...other factors, including the presence or absence of skilled data scientists; a thorough understanding of how to localize predictive models from other health systems; and how to best integrate existing investments in electronic health records with analytics technology, must be carefully considered...even a platform that offers great analytics capabilities...may not be popular with either clinicians or financial executives if the caregivers need to toggle back and forth between an EHR and an analytics platform...If I'm looking at a patient in front of me right now, I don't have time to go somewhere else, and when I've gone somewhere else I've already lost the advantage of this massive investment in my EHR...So it has to be part of your system's ecosystem...
- CVS site on Las Vegas Strip available at steep price (vegasinc.com)Drugstores galore: Another CVS being built on the Las Vegas Strip (vegasinc.com)
In the latest effort to make millions from the Strip’s lucrative drugstore sector, a CVS has hit the market with a big price tag...Capital Square Realty Advisors is trying to sell its CVS-occupied retail property at the base of Sky Las Vegas, a north Strip condo tower, for $42 million...That’s a 26 percent markup from the investment firm’s nearly $33.3 million purchase in spring 2014, county records show...It’s yet another move to cash in on a growing slice of commerce in the famed casino corridor. Drugstore chains Walgreens and CVS have been opening more stores on tourist-packed Las Vegas Boulevard, as they make big money there selling medicine, food, booze and Vegas-themed souvenirs, including flasks and shot glasses...CVS, for instance, plans to open a store in front of Bally’s — now under construction — in May, and it opened an outpost last year in the new three-story mall at Treasure Island...Investors also sold a Walgreens property on the north Strip in October for $37 million, or $2,310 per square foot. That was up 33 percent from what they paid in 2012.