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Food and Drug Administration warned Novartis AG last week after the Swiss firm was found in violation of manufacturing practices last year at two of its India drug-making plants…The warning, issued to Novartis's generic drugs unit Sandoz on Oct. 22, came after FDA officials inspected its Turbhe and Kalwa sites in western India…The FDA has banned more than 30 drug manufacturing plants in India since 2013, as it ramps up inspections of foreign facilities that supply to the United States. Several of India's largest drugmakers have faced rebukes, hurting the reputation of the industry, an important supplier of cheap generics.

Northern Nevada Medical Center (Sparks) recently received a 2015 HealthInsight Quality Award for its high performance in quality care measures and satisfaction. NNMC was one of only two local hospitals to earn the award and one of only seven statewide…HealthInsight Quality Award recipients have demonstrated delivery of high quality health care and excellent performance on a combination of quality of care measures and on patients’ perception of care measures. The federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services report these measures, which evaluate care provided for heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia and surgical infection prevention…NNMC, as do hospitals nationwide, focuses on patient involvement in care, and the award criteria include performance on patients’ perspectives in hospital care...

Rite Aid had a market value of about $6.4 billion before news reports of merger talks...Walgreens Boots Allianceis near a deal to buy Rite Aid....potentially uniting two of the country’s biggest drugstore chains…meaning a takeover could be worth more than $8 billion after a likely premium from Walgreens. Rite Aid also has $7.4 billion of debt…would create a new pharmacy giant with heightened influence with drug makers, pharmacy benefit managers and others in the health care industry.

Americans want more medications to treat obesity and depression, among other conditions…
Obesity, which affects more than one-third of Americans, ranked highest among US physicians who were asked which conditions they wished had more pharmacological remedies…More than 6000 US physicians participated in the "PatientsMap" survey, which was conducted by the Social Survey Research Information Co, M3 Inc, and M3 Global Research and took place between December 2013 and February 2014…According to the US survey results, the following are the 15 conditions that most warrant new medications, with some information on how pharmacists can help these patients:

1. Obesity (27.4%)
2. Depression (24.7%)
3. Diabetes (22.1%)
4. Dementia (20.5%)
5. Migraine (19.5%)
6. Anxiety (18.8%)
7. Hypertension (17.8%)
8. Chronic pulmonary obstructive disorder (16%)
9. Lower back pain (15.7%)
10. Dyslipidemia (15.6%)
11. Osteoarthritis (15.1%)
12. Fibromyalgia (14.8%)
13. Headache (14.8%)
14. Gastroesophageal reflux disease/nonerosive reflux disease (14.3%)
15. Diabetic neuropathy (13.9%)

Bloomberg's Cynthia Koons reports on earnings for big pharmaceuticals.

For those concerned about the rising cost of pharmaceuticals, Congress is proposing some relief. The two-year budget deal proposed by lawmakers this week unexpectedly includes a provision that would require generic drug makers to pay additional rebates to state Medicaid programs for any medicine that increases in price faster than the inflation rate…The cost of new medicines for hard-to-treat diseases, such as cancer and hepatitis C, worry public and private payers, who call them budget busters. And there is growing outrage at companies such as Valeant Pharmaceuticals and...Turing Pharmaceuticals for buying drugs and then boosting the prices to sky-high levels.

A promising new method for battling the spread of HIV in Africa was inspired by an unexpected source 8,000 miles away: a baby shower at the home of a Las Vegas professor…Dr. Echezona Ezeanolue — who leads health research efforts at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas — is earning praise from medical experts nationwide for coming up with a more effective way to convince pregnant women in his native Nigeria to be tested for the disease…Ezeanolue had long sought to find a way to boost the country's testing rate when inspiration hit in 2011 after his wife threw a party to celebrate the upcoming birth of their fourth child…"My wife said to me, why don't we use baby showers?"…It was a way to remove some of the barriers…To convince women to get tested, Ezeanolue and his team of 10 fellow researchers organized parties led by religious leaders at worship sites in Nigeria, a country with high church attendance rates. Faith-based organizations are highly influential across Africa, and they play a critical role in the fight against AIDS...

San Francisco supervisors have accepted a $400,000 payment from Nevada to settle allegations that psychiatric patients were wrongly shipped to California upon discharge...Board of Supervisors Tuesday approved the settlement without comment...San Francisco sued Nevada in September 2013 after the Sacramento Bee published accounts of patients who were discharged from Rawson-Neal Psychiatric Hospital in Las Vegas, and given bus tickets to California cities for further care.

Novartis agreed to pay about $390 million to wrap up federal kickback claims before the $3.3 billion case went to trial. The Justice Department and a number of U.S. states had sought up to $3.4 billion in damages in the case, which zeroed in on the Swiss drugmaker's relationships with specialty pharmacies…settlement, together with other one-time charges, knocked down Novartis' third-quarter net income, which declined to $1.8 billion…Novartis offered special deals to pharmacies to boost prescriptions of its transplant drug Myfortic (mycophenolic acid) in a head-to-head competition with Roche's CellCept (mycophenolate mofetil). The drugmaker set up another scheme to increase refills of its iron chelation drug Exjade (deferasirox)…

...Valeant Pharmaceuticals finally explained its complex interactions with Philidor RX Services, a so-called “specialty pharmacy” that has a previously-undisclosed financial relationship with Valeant...Valeant has been labeled the “Enron of the pharmaceutical industry,” although I don’t know if any of the alleged shenanigans are true…the controversy has tarred the entire specialty pharmacy industry along with manufacturers’ legitimate specialty pharmacy relationships…Philidor RX is not a specialty pharmacy. I also suggest what the Valeant-Philidor relationship could mean for payer surveillance of manufacturers’ copay offset programs…I believe (hope?) that over time, everyone will recognize the differences between a true specialty pharmacy and a company such as Philidor...expect greater scrutiny of manufacturers’ specialty channel strategies. Smaller independent specialty pharmacies should also expect greater oversight, as manufacturers and payers work to validate the business operations of their trading partners.