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Mike Glaicar, Business Development: Pharmacy Times...(PTNN) This weekly video program provides our readers with an in-depth review of the latest news, product approvals, FDA rulings and more.

Mike Glaicar, Business Development: Pharmacy Times...(PTNN) This weekly video program provides our readers with an in-depth review of the latest news, product approvals, FDA rulings and more.

Walgreens has agreed to pay $500,000 in penalties, fees, and costs related to misleading advertising practices that led to New York customers being overcharged for products..."Businesses are required to ensure that their advertisements are truthful and not misleading..."When consumers purchase products at retail stores in New York, they should be able to rely on the prices displayed in advertisements and on shelf tags and not have to worry about being overcharged when they get to the register."...Walgreens has agreed to reform its advertising and business practices in New York...It must remove expired shelf tags within 36 hours, restrict the use of "Smart Buy" or "Great Buy," and refrain from using "Last Chance" or "Clearance" tags when the item is available at a reduced price for an extended period of time...Walgreens will also conduct internal and external price check audits in stores. If a store fails 2 consecutive external audits, it will have to pay a $2500 penalty.

Latest Pharmacy Industry Healthcare Policy Update Review with Ron Lanton – Government Affairs Strategist for the Pharmacy Podcast Show and President of True North Political Solutions. (podcast 30 min)

Have you ever wondered how to get rid of an unfinished bottle of prescription drugs?...Don't throw it in the trash or flush it down the toilet, advises the Drug Enforcement Administration. Those methods of dumping your pills can actually be a safety hazard...Instead, Americans with expired, unused and unwanted prescription drugs can bring them for disposal at drop-off centers nationwide during Drug Take-Back Day, which takes place this year on Saturday, April 30...Drop-off sites will be open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. You can find one near you by going to the DEA's Diversion Control website. The service is free and anonymous...Only pills and patches will be accepted. The DEA will not take liquids, needles or sharps...The 10 previous take-back events have collected more than 5.5 million pounds (more than 2,750 tons) of pills...

The soaring cost of prescription drugs has generated outrage among politicians and patients. Some cancer drugs carry price tags of more than $100,000 a year, and health plans are increasingly asking people to shoulder a greater share of the cost...Americans regularly cite drug prices as a top health care concern...Higher drug prices threaten to raise insurance premiums and patients’ out-of-pocket expenses and can cost taxpayers more because of Medicaid and other government programs. But drug companies say the prices reflect the enormous investment of time and resources that go into bringing a drug to market and argue that many times, their drugs can prevent more expensive medical interventions like surgery and hospitalization...So how much do drugs cost?...A drug’s path from the manufacturer to the patient is circuitous, and many middlemen are paid along the way...The pharmaceutical company sends the drug to a distributor, which takes a fee and then sells the drug to a pharmacy, which pockets its own fee before dispensing the medication to a patient. If a patient is insured, a pharmacy-benefit manager is paid for processing the transaction between the pharmacy and the insurer or employer. The pharmacy-benefit manager also handles the rebates that flow from the drug maker to the insurer or the employer...The good news first: The vast majority of drugs dispensed in the United States...are generics, which are low-cost alternatives to brand-name drugs. If your doctor writes you a prescription, there is a very good chance it will cost you $10 or less...patients who are the sickest and require the most expensive drugs are the most vulnerable to soaring drug prices..."It’s sort of embedded in the health care system that the price is never the price, unless you’re a cash-paying customer,"...

Importance The optional free-text Notes field in ambulatory electronic prescriptions allows prescribers to communicate additional prescription-related information to dispensing pharmacists. However, populating this field with irrelevant or inappropriate information can create confusion, workflow disruptions, and potential patient harm.

Objectives To analyze the content of free-text prescriber notes in new ambulatory e-prescriptions and to develop recommendations to improve e-prescribing practices.

Main Outcomes and Measures Reviewers classified free-text prescriber notes as appropriate, inappropriate, or unnecessary.

Results 66.1% contained inappropriate content...

Conclusions and Relevance The free-text Notes field in e-prescriptions is frequently used inappropriately, suggesting the need for better prerelease usability testing, consistent end user training and feedback, and rigorous postmarketing evaluation and surveillance of EHR or e-prescribing software applications. Accelerated implementation of new e-prescribing standards and rapid adoption of existing ones could also reduce prescribers’ reliance on free-text use in ambulatory e-prescriptions.

A bill to have the nation's largest Medicaid program cover comprehensive medication management services by pharmacists and primary care physicians emerged from a committee hearing on April 5...In the past few years, we have added millions of Californians into Medi-Cal, making the effective management of the quality and cost of care an absolute necessity...CMM is a smart, important innovation to help meet these goals...CMM, according to California Assembly Bill 2084, is "the process of care that ensures each beneficiary's medications...are individually assessed to determine that each medication is appropriate for the beneficiary, effective for the medical condition, and safe given the comorbidities and other medications being taken, and [that] all medications are able to be taken by the patient as intended."...Absent from the bill, however, was any requirement for Medi-Cal to pay pharmacists for providing healthcare services or for Medi-Cal managed care plans to credential pharmacists as providers...pharmacists' strongest support comes from the rural areas of California, where access to healthcare is more difficult than in the urban centers of the state...

Transitions of care programs are designed to provide continuity of care to patients as they move from inpatient hospital settings to home or other care settings. Historically, care transitions have been an area in which medication errors and other problems occur. Sometimes patients’ medication lists are a big puzzle, and often there is information that is missing...With a transitions of care program, pharmacists can solve the puzzle by figuring out what is happening by talking to patients about their medications and reconciling their medication lists...Patients who go through multiple transitions of care are often the sickest patients with the most chronic diseases...If you can coordinate care for patients who are going through multiple transitions at multiple points, then you can improve care quality and save money on the Medicare side...it very fulfilling to offer transitions of care pharmacy services to patients...When you have a patient who tells you ‘thank you so much’ for spending the time with them to review medications so they understand, it is very rewarding and demonstrates how important our service is...

Pharmacists may do a better job than doctors helping chronically ill patients manage their blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar levels if they're allowed to direct people's health care, a new evidence review suggests...The review also found that pharmacists could manage chronic diseases with about the same efficiency as doctors...current evidence doesn't show whether pharmacists can actually improve a patient's overall health if they take over someone's care from a doctor...The reason for the interest in pharmacist-driven care is that some areas of the United States don't have enough doctors. Due to these shortages, other types of health care workers, such as nurse practitioners or physician assistants, are being called on to help fill the gaps...New legislation introduced in Congress would establish pharmacists as health care providers, and pay them accordingly through Medicare in communities where there aren't enough doctors...Pharmacists are paid less than physicians, and having them handle day-to-day chronic disease care would free up doctors to see patients with more serious and complex health problems...