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Brian Bobby, PTNN. This weekly video program provides our readers with an in-depth review of the latest news, product approvals, FDA rulings and more.

ZDoggMD, also known as Zubin Damania, will be the keynote speaker at the National Community Pharmacists Association Annual Convention October 14-18, according to a YouTube video posted by the satirical doctor..."Our nation's at a crossroads in health care today," he opens in the video. "As pharmacists, y'all know that the system ain't working. It's fractured. It rewards these silos of activity instead of awarding caregivers to actually work together on a team to do what they do best at the top of their license in service of patients."...ZDoggMD has a creative message of bringing everyone in health care together to create a better system of care that both incorporates fair payment and treatment for clinicians like pharmacists and inspires both personal and system transformation.

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

Ned Milenkovich, PharmD, JD, PTNN. This weekly video program provides our readers with an in-depth review of the latest news, product approvals, FDA rulings and more.

Lawyers for a Massachusetts pharmacy executive convicted of fraud for his role in a 2012 U.S. meningitis outbreak that killed 64 people asked a judge to order a new trial, charging that prosecutors misbehaved in providing evidence to the jury...Barry Cadden, co-founder of the now-defunct New England Compounding Center, was cleared of second-degree murder charges but was found guilty in March of racketeering and fraud for his role in shipping injectible steroids tainted with fungus linked to the deadly outbreak that also sickened 753 people in 20 states...Cadden's attorneys argued that prosecutors overreached in the number and severity of criminal charges that they filed against him. The attorneys said the prosecutors misled the jury by providing them a binder filled with laboratory tests showing that vials of steroids shipped by NECC were tainted but not providing comparable reports submitted by defense attorneys showing the vials were sterile.

Christopher Topoleski, Director of Federal Legislative Affairs for ASHP, talks about the ongoing legislative actions aimed at addressing rising medication costs in the drug industry.

Birth-control delivery services have understandably been on the rise, with each one trying to combine the best medical, financial and legal fit for patients in mobile form. A new app on the scene aims to streamline both process and cost for users by eliminating the pharmaceutical middleman and shipping wholesale medicine direct from its home base to patients' own...The Pill Club is on a mission to make getting birth control as easy and cost-effective as possible, and even fun...founder Nick Chang...these goals are made possible by a fundamental difference between his app and others on the market--namely, that it provides all prescriptions and products in-house, without needing to involve the pharmacies and pharmacy prices that many users are looking to avoid...serving as its own functional pharmacy is what will allow The Pill Club to make the difference for patients who want to acquire birth control but have faced all-too-common hurdles to getting it…I always saw that there were a number of hurdles facing women getting access to birth control. There are structural ones, such as needing to go to the doctor for a prescription, and visiting pharmacies again and again to fill that prescription...what we set out to do: to connect telemedicine with telepharmacy...

The National Association of Chain Drug Stores this week shared with the House Ways and Means Committee the important role pharmacy plays in the nation’s healthcare system in an effort to encourage passage of legislation giving pharmacists provider status under Medicare Part B...The Pharmacy and Medically Underserved Areas Enhancement Act has been introduced in both the House and Senate, and NACDS’ statement looked to drum up support by outlining the work pharmacists do for patients, particularly in medically underserved areas..."We urge you to increase access to much-needed services for underserved Medicare beneficiaries by supporting H.R. 592/S. 109, the Pharmacy and Medically Underserved Areas Enhancement Act, which will allow Medicare Part B to utilize pharmacists to their full capability by providing those underserved beneficiaries with services, subject to state scope of practice laws, not currently reaching them," NACDS said...

Nicole Crisano, PTNN. This weekly video program provides our readers with an in-depth review of the latest news, product approvals, FDA rulings and more.

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