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CVS Health is pushing for pharmacy technicians to be allowed to administer COVID-19 vaccines...The healthcare giant is hiring more than 10,000 full- and part-time pharmacy technicians in Q4 in anticipation of flu season, and urging for them to have an expanded scope of practice that would allow them to vaccinate patients for the novel coronavirus under supervision from an immunization-certified pharmacist...CVS said that allowing technicians to administer vaccines would "help fill the urgent need to safely and quickly scale distribution of a vaccine and extend the capacity of the health care workforce to address the pandemic."...READ MORE

October is American Pharmacists Month. This celebration—recognizing pharmacists’ contributions to health care and all they do for their communities—includes Women Pharmacist Day (October 12); Pharmacy Week (October 18-24), acknowledging the invaluable contributions of pharmacists and technicians to patient care; and Pharmacy Technician Day (October 20)...Pharmacists are busier than ever with flu season and the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, making it particularly important this year to take the time to celebrate and acknowledge our pharmacy staff’s contributions...Let’s take a look at a few ways that pharmacists are celebrating the value of the profession this month...READ MORE

Enabling tens of millions of Americans to get themselves speedily vaccinated against COVID-19 will be a huge logistics challenge. A new policy brief from the Mercatus Center, a think tank at George Mason University, argues that we could greatly accelerate the process by removing the complex state regulations that prevent pharmacists from administering vaccines...The...report recommends that state regulators relax age restrictions on pharmacist-administered vaccinations; issue statewide standing orders authorizing pharmacists to administer vaccines without requiring a physician-written prescription for each patient; and revise regulations, as Oregon has, to permit pharmacists to administer all of the vaccines recommended by the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. The latter recommendation "prevents lag in vaccine administration due to boards or legislatures having to approve individually named vaccines for pharmacist administration."...READ MORE

CVS Health is planning to double the number of its drive-thru testing sites by mid-October, the healthcare giant announced...CVS intends to add more than 2,000 sites at its pharmacies in the next several weeks, bringing its total to more than 4,000 nationwide. The new locations will be opened in waves, beginning with 400 new sites opening on Friday...READ MORE

Hospitals and health systems are building and expanding their own specialty pharmacies, and with good reason, according to several veterans of specialty rollouts...more than 75% of hospitals with at least 600 beds operate a specialty pharmacy, allowing them to directly prescribe patients critical medications for various chronic and often life-threatening diseases...An in-house specialty pharmacy provides many financial and clinical advantages over external specialty pharmacies for both patients and providers...significant roadblocks, and time and effort needed, to successfully launch a specialty pharmacy...READ MORE

Pharmaceutical Care Management Association president and CEO JC Scott issued the following statement on today’s hearing in the House Committee on Oversight and Reform on pricing practices for prescription drugs: “We appreciate the House Oversight Committee keeping a spotlight on drug manufacturers’ pricing practices. While drug manufacturers are solely responsible for setting and increasing prescription drug prices, pharmacy benefit managers, PBMs, are the only entity reducing prescription drug costs. PBMs keep prescription drug costs and premiums in check by negotiating lower costs with drug makers and pharmacies...We share President Trump’s intention to keep Medicare premiums affordable...PBMs will continue working with policymakers to advance solutions that encourage greater competition to reduce drug costs for every consumer.”...READ MORE

Goals to support the transformation of the pharmacy profession around the world are launched today by FIP...The FIP Development Goals build on 13 Pharmaceutical Workforce Development Goals for pharmacy education developed by the federation in 2016. Additions have been made to these 13 goals and eight new goals have been developed, providing a total of 21 goals relevant to fields of practice and science as well as to workforce and education...READ MORE

The new goals cover:

• Medicines expertise
• People-centred care
• Communicable diseases
• Antimicrobial stewardship
• Access to medicines, devices & services
• Patient safety
• Digital health
• Sustainability in pharmacy

Americans living or working in long-term care facilities, including nursing homes and assisted care living centers, will receive COVID-19 vaccinations for free if and when they become available, the Trump administration said...The administration announced a partnership with the nation's two largest drug store chains, CVS and Walgreens, "to provide and administer" the vaccines with "no out-of-pocket costs" for the recipients...READ MORE

Results from a recent NCPA survey indicated that patients’ prescriptions are being transferred from independent pharmacies to chain stores without patients’ permission...Almost 80% of community pharmacists who responded to the survey said they’ve lost patients because of unfair “patient steering” in the past 6 months — and CVS Health is most often the culprit, NCPA said in the news release...“Many members have been telling us that their patients are being transferred to larger competitors, and in many cases the patients don’t know when, why, or how. This survey sheds some light on the problem, and the results are very disturbing,” said B. Douglas Hoey...READ MORE

Pharmacist remuneration models in ever-evolving healthcare settings must be examined if global health is to be supported...“A common concern among pharmacy associations worldwide is the long-term financial viability of professional services delivered by pharmacists. These concerns are first and foremost triggered by the impacts of continued price and margin cuts in dispensing of medicines and the non-allocation of funding in many settings for extended professional services and social care,”...“A successful remuneration model is one that promotes sustainable delivery of professional services. These should be integrated into broader health system strategies and, therefore, funding plans...READ MORE