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Walgreens Boots Alliance this year moved its annual shareholder's meeting...to...Manhattan, approving three proposals made by the board, reviewing the company's recent events and looking ahead to the future...all of which executives said would help deliver a banner year for Walgreens in 2016.

1. Rite Aid acquisition - The addition of rite aid to our network offers the potential for significant cost savings and purchasing efficiencies in addition to opportunities in terms of important market penetration...
2. Valeant Pharmaceuticals partnership - ...offer its branded dermatology and ophthalmology products at a reduced cost to the consumer...This partnership...is a demonstration of how partnerships can create value while reducing costs for the system as a whole...
3. Boots’ beauty proposition - transforming Walgreens into must-visit destination centers for WBA's owned beauty brands...as part of the company's initiative "Beauty 2000"...

A very different kind of pharmacy opened in Redwood City on Wednesday. It's called a food pharmacy and is designed to encourage low-income people suffering with diabetes, to eat a healthy diet...It's the first of its kind ever to open in California...With a doctor's prescription, low-income diabetes patients can get food at this special pantry inside the Samaritan House Health Clinic, for free...The food is donated by the Second Harvest Food Bank, which says diabetes and other diseases run rampant among low-income people who often can't afford to eat healthier, or don't know how..."At Second Harvest, our clients have told us that one out of every three adults that we serve are suffering from diabetes. That's more than three times the national average. So it is a big problem among low-income communities," said Kathy Jackson, director of the food bank...The food pharmacy officially opened on Wednesday as a pilot program expecting to provide 100 diabetes patients with a ticket to healthier eating habits...Doctors say the cost of food is a lot less than the cost of treating the effects of a worsening disease.

Is it necessary for a pharmacy school leader to be a practicing or former pharmacist?...current dean of the Purdue College of Pharmacy, argued that having a pharmacy school dean who lacks experience as a pharmacist is perhaps not the best option...It appears pharmacy is unique among health profession programs in its acceptance of being led by individuals inexperienced in the profession prior to their appointment…14% of accredited pharmacy schools have deans who are not pharmacists...While most non-pharmacist deans were long-standing faculty members in a pharmacy program prior to their appointment, some had no apparent experience within academic pharmacy or the profession overall...5 main reasons a pharmacy dean should ideally be a pharmacist were credibility, connectivity, breadth of knowledge, cheerleading, and foresight...professor and chairman of medicinal chemistry at the University of Michigan College of Pharmacy...gave his opposing views...pharmacy school deans need to be qualified to "provide leadership in pharmacy professional education."...pharmacy schools don’t just churn out pharmacists; some schools have a more "diverse mission" involving biomedical research and academic programming. So, a dean’s experience training students to become pharmacists would be just one of many useful skillsets...

Federal inspectors will soon release details on problems at blood-testing facility...U.S. health inspectors have found serious deficiencies at Theranos Inc.’s laboratory in Northern California...The problems were found during an inspection by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the chief federal regulator of clinical labs, at the blood-testing company’s facility in Newark, Calif. Failing to fix the problems could put the Theranos lab at risk of suspension from the Medicare program...inspection results are expected to be publicly released soon...

In 2011, in an effort to bring a lower-cost drug to the market, the Food and Drug Administration was forced to accept the widespread compounding of a specialty drugs...The agency’s submission involved an old, and previously cheap, generic medicine that had secured some renewed exclusivity, and was being sold as a higher-priced specialty drug. But the FDA’s move deliberately undermined the agency’s own approval requirements...It sent an unambiguous message that FDA wouldn’t try to enforce its already weakened authority over compounding–so long as the price of the knock-off drug was right...The compounding of drugs grew precipitously over the next few years...the passage of the 2013 Drug Quality and Security Act...closed loopholes that allowed compounding outfits to operate beyond the bounds envisioned when the local practice of pharmacy was carved out from typical FDA oversight...some are seeking to co-opt some key provisions in that law as a way to once again expand compounding well beyond the practices’ historical concept. Once again, these efforts are being insincerely waged in the name of increasing drug competition and lowering costs…The co-opting of the practice of pharmacy compounding in this manner also puts the entire practice of pharmacy at risk. Compounding remains an important pharmacy activity...But each time outfits try to exploit the practice simply as a way to evade traditional regulation of drug manufacturers; they create risks and bad outcomes that ultimately lead to new restrictions. That was the legacy of the 2013 passage of the DQSA. Now some who instigated that law want to do it all over again.

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.

Getting U.S. government and commercial insurers to cover new medicines can now take longer than in Europe, Swiss drugmaker Novartis said on Wednesday, blaming U.S. delays for weaker than expected sales of a key heart failure treatment...Novartis said poor sales of one of those new drugs, its heart failure treatment Entresto - just $5 million for the fourth quarter, well off expectations of analysts as well as the company - resulted from delays in making new medicines available to insured patients...European insurers and governments were now faster to reimburse for medicines such as Entresto and Novartis's new psoriasis and arthritis drug Cosentyx than those across the Atlantic...They (in the U.S.) have really developed their tools extensively around introduction of new drugs, which creates a period of time where access is difficult...And that period of time is now longer than it is in Europe...

...pharmacy benefit managers expect the launch of Merck & Co Inc's new hepatitis C pill to improve their leverage in price negotiations with drugmakers...The Food and Drug Administration...approved Merck's Zepatier (elbasvir and grazoprevir) for treatment of patients infected with the most common form of the liver-destroying virus, genotype 1, as well as the less common genotype 4...The list price for the new drug is $54,600 for a 12-week regimen - compared with $94,500 for Gilead Sciences Inc's Harvoni. A multi-pill regimen, Viekira Pak, from AbbVie Inc has a list price near $83,000..."We look forward to working with Merck," Express Scripts said..."Having multiple, clinically effective options allows us to again leverage competition and make medicine more affordable for our clients while ensuring appropriate patient access."..."Given Merck's interest in participating in such a large market, we model and fully expect increased price competition and we also view Merck's list price as a rational way to stay out of the drug pricing spotlight,"...

Next week, Drug Channels Institute will release our updated, revised, and expanded 2016 Economic Report on Retail, Mail, and Specialty Pharmacies...provides a sneak peek at the largest pharmacies, ranked by total U.S. prescription dispensing revenues for calendar year 2015…We estimate that total revenues of retail, mail, and specialty pharmacies reached $364.1 billion in 2015, up 12.1% from 2014. The top tier of dispensing pharmacies—CVS Health, Walgreens Boots Alliance, Express Scripts, Walmart, Rite Aid, and UnitedHealth Group’s OptumRx—accounted for about 64% of U.S. prescription dispensing revenues in 2015...many of the largest pharmacies are now central-fill, mail and specialty pharmacies operated by such PBMs and payers as Express Scripts, Caremark, and UnitedHealth. This reflects the growing role of specialty drugs in the pharmacy industry. We estimate that specialty drugs account for 35% or more of revenues at these pharmacies.

Walmart and three of the nation’s largest bottled water suppliers are coming to the aid of Flint, Michigan, residents who lack access to safe drinking water after the municipal water supply became tainted with lead...Walmart, Coca-Cola, Nestlé and PepsiCo are sending 176 truckloads of water to Flint – roughly 6.5 million bottles – which is an amount estimated to meet the daily needs of more than 10,000 children for the rest of the year..."At Walmart, we take pride in using our strengths to help communities like Flint during times of crisis, as we’ve done around the world in times of need,"..."We’re working to ensure that the children of Flint, the city’s most vulnerable citizens, have access to safe water."...Walmart has already donated 14 trucks of water, or 504,000 bottles, and 1,792 water filters to the Flint community since July 2015...In addition to the water donation, the companies are encouraging others to support the Flint community by working with Good360 where nonprofits operating in Flint are listing their needs online.