- Boston Medical Center Teams Up with Rhode Island Hospital, CVS Health to Address Use of Pharmacy-Based Naloxone to Combat Opioid Addiction and Overdoses (cvshealth.com)
Boston Medical Center has received a $1.3 million grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to support a demonstration project of pharmacy-based naloxone rescue kits to help reduce opioid addiction and overdose death in two New England States: Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The study will be conducted in partnership with Rhode Island Hospital.., CVS Health, which has pharmacies throughout the U.S., and several local community pharmacies…including...Eaton Apothecary.
Pharmacies have enormous potential to expand the reach and impact of critical public health interventions, just as we have seen happen with pharmacy access to clean syringes and adult immunizations...how do we do that with naloxone rescue kits?
- CVS banned tobacco. Now its sales are hurting (wesh.com)
Sales at CVS Health are getting "smoked."… CVS became the first major pharmacy chain in America to stop selling cigarettes and other tobacco products in its stores. The drug store chain said it was the right thing to do -- even though it would hurt sales….prescription sales continue to rise, general merchandise sales tumbled nearly 8% last quarter on a same-store basis.
- CVS Health Has Been Surging — Will the Gains Continue? (thestreet.com)
CVS Health has transformed its business model in recent years to give itself a more healthy image. Consumers can no longer buy tobacco products in its stores, and now, they can get health care services at the Minute Clinics in 860 of its locations. Investors have liked this strategy, and the stock has been on a momentum run-up since October 2011, including a 16.8% gain so far in 2015.
- NACDS urges creation of standards to maintain link between Medicaid patients and community pharmacies (drugstorenews.com)
National Association of Chain Drug Stores commented this week on the proposed regulations on the use of managed care in Medicaid and in the Children’s Health Insurance Program… create standards that will serve to maintain the strong link between Medicaid patients and community pharmacies and the valuable services that these pharmacies provide… six key areas:
- Outpatient Drugs…preventing mandatory use of mail-order pharmacies,…preventing a reliance on closed networks for…specialty medications
- Network Adequacy and Availability of Services – advancing the belief that "patients should be allowed the freedom to select a pharmacy that best fits their personal health needs
- Program Integrity and Auditing – recognizing the "balance between the need to ensure integrity in the Medicaid program and the need to afford due process and equal protection to providers"
- Medical Loss Ratio – allowing medication therapy management services to be considered as a healthcare activity, rather than an administrative cost
- Provider Payment Initiatives – incorporating innovative pharmacy services as part of managed care organizations’ strategies for delivering healthcare services
- Development of a Medicaid Managed Care Quality Rating System – including appropriate medication-use metrics
- Veterinary Medicine in Community Pharmacy (pharmacytimes.com)
When a veterinarian prescribes a medication, that prescription is often filled at a local community pharmacy….community pharmacists have little formal training in this area….It is difficult to know how to treat veterinary "patients" when different species and breeds can have vastly different responses to a treatment….
- New pharmacy delivery app hits Manhattan (drugstorenews.com)ZipDrug (zipdrug.com)
new app is looking to give Manhattanites a reprieve from standing in line at the pharmacy. Zipdrug,…allows users to have their prescriptions delivered on-demand within an hour… bicycle messengers will pick up medications — except for controlled substances — from the user’s preferred pharmacy,…so long as the prescriber submits an electronic script.
- Los Angeles Pharmacist Sentenced to 18 Months in Prison for Medicare Part D Scheme (justice.gov)
owner and operator (Rouzbeh Javaherian) of a Los Angeles pharmacy was sentenced...to 18 months in prison for his role in a fraud scheme involving the Medicare Part D prescription drug program.... In addition to imposing the prison term...ordered ..to pay $644,060 in restitution to Medicare.
- CMS Suspends Torchmark Part D Plans For ‘Systemic’ Flaws (law360.com)Non-Immediate Suspension of Enrollment and Marketing (cms.gov)
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has suspended enrollment in two Medicare Part D plans sold by Torchmark Corp. because of "widespread and systemic" failures that contributed to the program's highest complaint rate,..."intermediate sanctions" that will result in suspension of enrollment and marketing activities …
- Over-the-counter drug literacy a must for tweens and teens (washingtonpost.com)
There’s so much for parents to talk about with teens heading off to college for the first time…There’s the safe-sex talk, the nutrition talk, the get-enough-sleep talk, the partying talk and the study-hard talk. In between all the talking and the packing and the planning, teaching kids how to safely self-medicate with over-the-counter preparations for colds, headaches and sore muscles might not be on the parental radar.
- 13 Responses to Repeated Requests for Early Narcotic Refills (pharmacytimes.com)
How can a pharmacist differentiate between legitimate and illegitimate early narcotic refill requests?…red flag is when patients regularly request early refills for narcotic prescriptions…pharmacists who are repeatedly confronted with early refill requests have a responsibility to say "no" .. those who ignore this issue and repeatedly fill narcotics too soon are being careless with their license and the profession’s reputation.
- "The doctor wrote it, so I’m supposed to get it."
- "It was stolen from my home."
- "I was robbed."
- "Someone else picked up my meds and took them."
- "I’m traveling out of state."
- "The pharmacy miscounted the day’s supply."
- "The insurance allows it 5 days early."
- "I’ll just pay cash."
- "The other pharmacist allows it."
- "This is for my leg pain."
- "The other one didn’t work, so I flushed it."
- "You shorted me pills."
- "I lost them, dropped them, forgot them at a friend’s house, dog ate them, washed them..."