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

A little more than one week following its reintroduction in the Senate, provider status legislation is again being entertained in the House...the Pharmacy and Medically Underserved Areas Enhancement Act (H.R.592)...will make it easier for Medicare patients in underserved communities to receive care...The...Act would allow Medicare beneficiaries to receive basic care such as immunizations, diabetes management, blood pressure screenings and routine checks from pharmacists. The bill reached impressive levels of bipartisan support… There is currently no avenue for Medicare to directly reimburse pharmacists for providing this care...The work already is underway to build on the momentum that was started in the last Congress, to accelerate the campaign to enhance the quality, accessibility and affordability of patient care through pharmacist-provided services...Pharmacists are highly-accessible, clinically-trained medication experts who can improve health outcomes and reduce overall costs…We hope the common-sense, bicameral, bipartisan legislation, which also generated a lot of support in the previous Congress, can pass both chambers and make it to President Trump’s desk for his signature...

In February 2016, the U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention published Chapter <800> Hazardous Drugs—Handling in Healthcare Settings, which sets standards for handling these drugs. Although those standards will not be implemented until July 1, 2018, the countdown is on— and health-system pharmacists and others who deal with hazardous drugs need to start getting ready now, if they have not started already...The standards will be enforceable by the FDA, state pharmacy boards, and the Joint Commission. This makes understanding what they entail of vital importance to pharmacists and anyone who uses these drugs...Chapter <800> applies to all health care personnel who handle hazardous drugs and all entities that store, prepare, transport, or administer these drugs, with no exceptions based on size or type of facility or on the amount of drugs used...

A former Lincoln County commissioner was sentenced Friday to one-to-four years in prison for defrauding insurance companies...Adam Katschke...previously pleaded guilty to felony insurance and Medicaid fraud in the case...Katschke, the head pharmacist and owner of Meadow Valley Pharmacy in Caliente, defrauded insurance companies...by billing for large amounts of pharmaceutical prescriptions that were rarely provided as billed to the patients or prescribed by a physician...The sentencing...ordered Katschke to pay $1.5 million in restitution...The defendant stole a million and a half dollars from taxpayers through Medicaid, a program designed to provide care for those in need, not line the pockets of fraudsters…

The PhRMA-backed report made the case that drugmakers are not solely to blame for ballooning treatment prices, which have come under intense scrutiny from state and federal legislatures, industry executives and research organizations...As competition in the pharmaceutical marketplace has increased in recent years, brand manufacturers have been making larger payments for market access to their medicines...Government-mandated discounts and fees have also increased over the last five years. Many of these discounts are not plainly visible, leading to misperceptions about the relative share of gross and net drug expenditures realized by brand manufacturers...each player has taken home large chunks of the drug sales revenue as well...non-manufacturers, which include wholesalers, PBMs, health plans and pharmacies, snag 42% of gross drug spending — which doesn't take into account any type of discount — from the initial point-of-sale payment for a drug by a payer or patient...Branded drugmakers take home 39% of those gross expenditures, with generics manufacturers gobbling up 19%...

...Dr. Henri Wetselaar...his medical assistant (David Litwin) and a pharmacist (Jason Smith)...are accused of funneling large quantities of pills onto the streets of Las Vegas through an illegal prescription drug ring...the trial...has provided a window into the scope of the federal government’s crackdown on prescription drug abuse in Southern Nevada...One of the government’s star witnesses is a drug dealer who testified this week about an arrangement she had with Wetselaar and Litwin, who saw clients out of her home twice a week. Carolyn Allen said she would refer clients to Wetselaar, instruct them to complain about back pain, and provide them with the cash to pay for the prescription. Clients would return to her with the prescriptions...she would take the prescriptions to Lam’s Pharmacy, where Smith was the manager. She said Lam’s Pharmacy maintained an entire book dedicated only to her clients. Allen said her clients were prescribed — among other drugs — oxycodone, hydrocodone, Soma and Xanax.

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

Employers and drugmakers are eager to say good riddance to an excise tax on brand-name prescription medicines that could get stripped under the latest GOP plan to repeal ObamaCare...While the law’s other major taxes, like the medical device or so-called Cadillac taxes, generated major campaigns seeking their repeal, the prescription drug fee has garnered little publicity. But it’s no negligible element among the law's funding sources. It's expected to bring in $27 billion over a 10-year period, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation's 2010 estimates...But the branded pharmaceutical fee never attracted bipartisan backing for repeal and it went into effect in 2010...consumers are "insensitive to changes in the drug prices."...if someone needs a specialty drug that is likely to be a brand-name product, his or her insurance is going to pay for it or that person will have to pay out of pocket for that amount...if the price happens to go up, you’re still going to pay for the drug...The fight over repealing other ObamaCare taxes means it's still unclear whether the prescription fee will be gone in the first round of the health law’s repeal measures...there could be other opportunities to get rid of it. ObamaCare repeal is looking to be...a series of legislative actions and regulatory actions over the course of the next year or so...

University, health and city officials gathered… at Las Vegas City Hall offered an in-depth review of the UNLV School of Medicine’s progress in establishing the...medical school…city officials believe the school is integral to...develop a...medical district in the central valley...The district, established in 1997 to create an area of concentrated medical activity...covers 684 acres with a core 214-acre area between Charleston Boulevard and Alta Drive, from Rancho Drive to Martin Luther King Boulevard...They have invested more than $36 million in infrastructure in four years and expect to pump in another $97 million in 2018 and beyond...The investment…is expected to pay off...By 2030, the medical school is projected to have an economic impact of $1.2 billion...the growth...provides opportunities for collaboration with local physicians and allows the homegrown medical community to grow alongside the needs of the area...

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.