Category: Pharmacists

MEwens
The ISMP sees no relief in sight for the problem of shortages, which can be caused by a variety of factors.
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MEwens
Also: the AMA rates commercial insurers; a new theory of prescribing statins; a rare death of a living organ donor.
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MEwens
Also: health-overhaul initiatives in November; CVS and Walgreen duke it out over PBM; lack of evidence on atrial fibrillation treatments.
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MEwens
Thirty-six states permit pharmacists to sub in a generic for a name-brand drug, unless they’re told otherwise by the prescribing doctor.
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Jonathan D. Rockoff
A Kaiser Permanente Colorado study looked at whether people using a home-based monitoring system better managed their high blood pressure.
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JGrimes
Drugstores are trying to bolster their presence in the in-store clinic market, even though the concept has thus far not been a particularly profitable one. The WSJ reports that CVS Caremark may double its number of MinuteClinic retail operations over the next five years.
The company has no plans to forge financial partnerships with […]

noreply@blogger.com (RCoffield@fsblaw.com)
A bunch of the blockbuster drugs that carried the drug industry for the past decade are about to go off patent. As we’ve noted along with everybody else, that’s going to be tough for pharma companies.
(See, for example, the news this week from Pfizer and Bristol-Myers Squibb, which over the next two […]

noreply@blogger.com (RCoffield@fsblaw.com)
Walgreens is threatening to stop filling Medicaid prescriptions at 64 of its 121 pharmacies in Washington state because of state cuts in payments.
Walgreens, the biggest drug-store chain in the country, has been down this road before. It threatened to pull out of Medicaid programs last year before settlements were reached in Delaware […]

JGrimes
A couple interesting hires in corporate health-care were announced today:
Julie Gerberding, the doctor who ran the CDC from 2002 until early this year, will head Merck’s vaccine unit, the company said. Vaccines are a $5 billion business for Merck; the previous head of the group retired earlier this year. Merck seems to be […]

JGrimes
As soon as drugstore chain CVS agreed to buy pharmacy-benefit manager Caremark Rx back in 2006, critics complained that the combination would create a conflict of interest, and potentially higher prices, by allowing CVS to use the drug-coverage part of the business to steer patients to its stores.
Executives at the two companies dismissed […]