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The building that once housed the last drugstore in this town of fewer than 600 is now a barbecue restaurant, where pit boss Larry Holtman dishes out smoked brisket and pulled pork across the same counter where pharmacists dispensed vital medications more than 30 years ago...It’s an hour long drive over treacherous mountain passes to Laramie, Wyoming, or Granby or Steamboat Springs, Colorado — and the nearest pharmacies. The routes out of the valley in which Walden lies are regularly closed by heavy winter snows, keeping residents in and medications out...Walden has suffered the fate of many small towns across the United States, as the economics of the pharmacy business have made it difficult for community drugstores to survive...With no local access to prescription drugs, the town of mainly cattle ranchers and hay farmers has crowdsourced a delivery system, taking advantage of anyone’s trip to those bigger cities to pick up medications for the rest of the town...READ MORE

Other recommendations include boosting local production, promoting research and development, and creating robust quality management maturity...The White House and several federal agencies...released a series of policy recommendations for addressing the vulnerabilities in U.S. pharmaceutical supply chains...The review came in response to an executive order signed by President Joe Biden...that directed the government to identify risks, address vulnerabilities and develop a strategy to promote supply chain resilience throughout sectors...READ MORE

In reality, nearly half (44%) of hospital pharmacists experienced a diversion event within the past 12 months, which is up from 37% in 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated this “hidden epidemic,” a multi-faceted challenge which poses serious risks to patients, clinicians and healthcare systems...Here are 5 questions frequently asked by health systems seeking to accelerate and improve their efforts to detect and mitigate drug diversion incidents...READ MORE

1. What are the biggest challenges in identifying drug diversion?
2. How have responsibilities for addressing and resolving drug diversion issues evolved?
3. What offers the biggest opportunity to improve diversion identification?
4. When selecting automated systems and software, which capabilities are most critical?
5. How do you justify the cost of technology in a difficult economic environment?

One day, my wife Denise and I went to our local bank with a plastic card and put it in the machine. We had the option of withdrawing either $25 or $50 out of our checking account. The money dropped down in an envelope with the cash inside. This was amazing technology for 1981. I then went to work and pulled out the Smith Corona typewriter and started typing prescription labels...Yesterday, I went to our warehouse club and pulled up to the gas pumps. I took out my phone and waved it at the QR code on the screen. I began pumping my gas without ever getting my wallet out of my pocket. I checked my email and saw I had spent $28.54 on pump #4 at 7:46 am...When I stand in front of my pharmacy computer for 10 hours at a time, I often wonder why this technology seems so far behind the other technology I use daily. If we want to move this profession toward more patient-centric care, we must have the tools to do that. All I ask is that my pharmacy computer have the same technology as my gas pump...READ MORE

A California jury has cleared CVS in a years-long lawsuit alleging the pharmacy giant overcharged them by more than $121 million for generic drugs...A group of insured pharmacy customers in six states filed suit against CVS Pharmacy in 2015, claiming that the company overcharged them and their insurers for generic drugs while charging low, flat-fee prices through a discount program for cash-pay customers...A federal jury in the court for the Northern District of California unanimously determined...day that the pharmacy chain did not violate statutes in the six states with its Health Savings Pass program...READ MORE

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has recently released its employment and salary data for 2020. That means it’s time to update Drug Channels Institute’s annual analysis of pharmacist salaries and employment...We have found that the share of pharmacists who work at hospitals reached a new high. What’s more, average base salaries for retail pharmacists have dropped, while salaries have risen for pharmacists employed by hospitals, physician offices, and other non-retail settings...READ MORE

Eli Lilly is asking a federal court to stop the federal government from imposing any penalties over its decision to restrict sales of 340B-discounted products to contract pharmacies...The request for a preliminary injunction and temporary restraining order...comes less than a week after the Health Resources and Services Administration wrote to Lilly and five other drug companies over the contract pharmacy restrictions...The injunction and order show that drug companies appear likely to fight HRSA’s order to immediately offer 340B-discounted drugs to contract pharmacies, which are third-party entities that dispense drugs on behalf of the 340B covered entities...READ MORE

Discounted purchases under the program reached at least $38 billion in 2020. That figure is an astonishing 27% higher than its 2019 counterpart—and more than quadruple the value of discounted purchases in 2014…The 340B program’s size now exceeds the Medicaid program’s outpatient drug sales—and accounts for nearly 20% of the total rebates and discounts that manufacturers provide for brand-name drugs. Alas, many elements of the 340B program—including its controversial contract pharmacy component—lack a comprehensive regulatory infrastructure…READ MORE

A former pharmacist in Wisconsin who intentionally tampered with more than 500 doses of a COVID-19 vaccine was sentenced to three years in prison on Tuesday. Steven Brandenburg, 46, pleaded guilty in February to two felony counts of attempting to tamper with a consumer product...He had admitted to intentionally removing the doses manufactured by Moderna from a refrigerator for hours at Aurora Medical Center in Grafton, located just north of Milwaukee...READ MORE

Lawmakers behind the Improving Seniors’ Timely Access to Care Act...not only requires electronic prior authorization for MA plans, but also requires the Department of Health and Human Services to create a process for faster decisions on items and services that commonly get approved...While the bill only applies to MA plans, lawmakers hope to eventually tackle more types of insurance such as commercial plans...READ MORE