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In hopes of reducing inappropriate opioid prescribing, the Chicago City Council...passed an ordinance that requires all pharmaceutical sales reps to become licensed...The ordinance, which the pharmaceutical industry opposed, will require sales reps to undergo training for ethics, marketing regulations, and applicable laws. Reps will also have to file reports with the city that disclose the names of doctors they visit as part of their work, the number of visits, and any samples, materials, or gifts provided, along with their value. Reps will also have to pay a $750 licensing fee and renew the licenses annually...The move is the latest effort by the city to combat an epidemic of deaths and overdoses attributed to opioid painkillers...The city expects to collect more than $1 million in licensing revenue and will use that to support ongoing efforts to educate doctors and the public about opioids, and cover the cost of regulation...I think will be hard to prove its an effective way to control the prescribing, so I don’t think it’s really going to solve the problem directly. It might help indirectly if the city can say that overprescribing is caused by aggressive sales tactics...I’m not sure how they can manipulate the data to prove anything. But they may be able to squeeze something out of the data. They’re asking for a lot...

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

As retail pharmacy celebrates America's military veterans...those veterans are celebrating retail pharmacy, at least those brick-and-mortar pharmacies not located within a VA medical center, a recent J.D. Power survey found...One reason? The ordering process. Veterans were more satisfied with retail brick-and-mortar pharmacies as compared to medical center pharmacies...veterans were more likely to understand explanations from retail pharmacists (93%) as compared to pharmacists from VA medical centers (80%), even though the average length of a conversation is longer at the VA (4.8 minutes with VA pharmacists vs. 3.8 minutes with retail pharmacists).

Justin Gallagher, associate publisher of The American Journal of Managed Care. Welcome to This Week in Managed Care, From the Managed Markets News Network.

The nation's largest physician organization is supporting value-based pricing for medications...The American Medical Association...announced it supports initiatives...aimed at changing the fundamentals of prescription drug pricing without compromising patient outcomes and access...Its new policy...seeks to blunt growing pharmaceutical spending rates...by incorporating a balance of benefits and cost when pricing drugs. The organization believes prices should be set by objective, independent agencies that use evidence and data. Processes to set those prices should be transparent, not burden physicians or patients and maintain affordability for patients...The new AMA policy acknowledges the carte blanche approach to drug pricing needs to change to align with the health system's drive for high-quality care based on value...This transformation should support drug prices based on overall benefit to patients compared to alternatives for treating the same condition. We need to have the full picture to assess a drug's true value to patients and the health care system...

Terri Warholak, PhD, RPh, Associate Professor in the Department of Pharmacy Practice and Science at The University of Arizona; PTNN; This weekly video program provides our readers with an in-depth review of the latest news, product approvals, FDA rulings and more.

Frustrated by the high price of antiviral drugs, thousands of patients from London to Moscow to Sydney are turning to a new wave of online "buyers clubs" to get cheap generic medicines to cure hepatitis C and protect against HIV infection...While regulators warn that buying drugs online is risky, scientific data presented at a recent medical conference suggest that treatment arranged through buyers club can be just as effective as through conventional channels...The buyers clubs' websites act as middlemen by providing details of trusted online pharmacies and drug manufacturers, exploiting a loophole in World Trade Organization patent rules that allows small-scale imports of medicines for personal use...the advent of today's buyers clubs is just the latest chapter in an ongoing war over drug prices...

The problem with pills is that you have to take them on a regular basis. An innovative new pop-up capsule solves this problem by staying in the stomach for days, where it slowly releases medication over the course of an entire treatment...This “ultra long-acting oral drug delivery” system was developed by researchers at MIT and healthcare firm Lyndra, and it’s changing the way we think about pills. After swallowing, the capsule unfurls into a star-like shape—a configuration that prevents it from entering the digestive tract, while still allowing food to pass. Then, for the next seven to ten days, it stays in the stomach, slowly releasing medication. The star eventually breaks down, allowing it to safely pass through the intestines…this pill will be particularly helpful in the developing world, and for those who have difficulty, for whatever reason, taking drugs as prescribed, including patients with hypertension, diabetes, neurological disorders, and opioid addiction.

Amid the election fervor...Walgreens Boots Alliance quietly took action against its former partner, Theranos, for breach of contract...The retail pharmacy filed a $140 million lawsuit against the embattled blood test device maker, suing for breach of contract…”We are disappointed that Walgreens filed this lawsuit," Elizabeth Holmes...founder and CEO of Theranos said in a statement. "Over the years, Walgreens consistently failed to meet its commitments to Theranos."...On June 12 Walgreens announced that it would terminate its relationship with Theranos and close all 40 of its Theranos Wellness Centers, which operated in Arizona. This followed the company's January announcement that it was halting Theranos lab testing operations at its Palo Alto, Calif. location.

Something astonishing has happened in the past year to outpatient treatment at the Veterans Affairs hospital here...Vets regularly get next-day and even same-day appointments for primary care now, no longer waiting a month or more to see a doctor as many once did...The reason is they don’t all see doctors. Clinical pharmacists — whose special training permits them to prescribe drugs, order lab tests, make referrals to specialists and do physical examinations — are handling more patients’ chronic care needs. That frees physicians to concentrate on new patients and others with complex needs...A quarter of primary care appointments at the Madison hospital are now handled by clinical pharmacists…It’s having a significant impact on reducing wait times and our office is trying to expand more of them nationally to increase access...VA hospital officials in both Madison and El Paso said they faced challenges initially in persuading doctors to delegate some duties to qualified pharmacists...Some physicians feel like it’s a turf war and don’t want to refer their patients because they feel the clinical pharmacist is trying to practice medicine...