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First it was the stand-off with Walgreens over how much more money they thought they deserved than Walgreens over filling Rxs. As of this writing, it looks like neither one is going to blink or back down. Then there is the issue of them buying/merging with Medco… these two entities generate 2.5 BILLION in net […]
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There is a old saying “..the faster I go the behinder I get …” over the last couple of decades the pharmacy profession has been throwing both ancillary staff and “electronic helpers” to allow us to be more “efficient”. We seem to now reached a point that we are continuing to “tweet” the efficiencies of […]
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More Lawmakers Raise ESI-Medco Merger Concerns At least 29 members of Congress now have publicly expressed concerns regarding the proposed Express Scripts Inc.-Medco merger The above is from a NCPA press release of Dec 13, 2011. At last count there are 435 members in the House. That would suggest that < 7% of the house […]
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I got a second letter from Anthem ( Blue Cross/Blue Shield) this week. The first letter was several months ago. IMO.. this letter demonstrates just how Pharmacists, the service that we provide and medication as a whole has become nothing more than a COMMODITY to everyone but the patient… at least those patients that care. […]
Filed under: General dumb-ass problems, Insurance companies | Leave a Comment »
http://www.riograndesun.com/articles/2011/12/03/opinion/editorials/doc4ed7a18ae37c7886620621.txt http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/222929/group/homepage/ The writer has notice a difference is recent months of the words used to report deaths by drugs. A year ago, it was not unusual to see a death by drug reported as “accidental”. Now I am seeing that the reports of a person dying from drugs is just stated as a “drug […]
Filed under: drug overdoses/mis-use, Dumb politicians, General dumb-ass problems | Leave a Comment »
As pill mills are shut down in Florida, customers turn to Web http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/as-pill-mills-are-shut-down-in-florida-2010874.html Just imagine that if you cut the supply of substances that a certain part of the population likes to abuse… those people are going to start looking else where for their “needs”. It is already starting to be reported that the number […]
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http://seekingalpha.com/news-article/2089614-walgreens-senior-vice-president-jeffrey-kang-joins-ncqa-board-of-directors http://healthblog.steveariens.com/?p=230 http://healthblog.steveariens.com/?p=108 While I hate to use a few “isolated incidents” to point to a pattern, with seemingly no tracking/reporting of errors and or bogus rxs being filled by pharmacy in general and Walgreen in particular. To have a SVP from Walgreens appointed a group that is concerned about quality issues in medical care, […]
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http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2011/nov/24/court-ruling/ Imagine warning a patient that their new prescription is for a drug that your records note that they are allergic to. The patient denies being allergic to the drug and requests that you fill it. The patient takes the medication and DIES ! The patient’s family sues you and the chain that you work […]
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http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/14/study-finds-co-payments-discourage-drug-treatments/?seid=auto&smid=tw-nytimeshealth in a recent study, involving patients after hospitalization from a heart attack and being discharged… The study focused on the effect of the patents being compliant with their medications if the cost of their medications (co-pays) were removed from the equation. Historically, studies on compliance have indicated that roughly 33% of pts will remain […]
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Those of us who have a very long hind-sight of the working of our profession, we should have seen this coming. At the beginning of my career, the average Rx price was $4 -$5, there was no such thing as a “drug card”, the number of available generics could be counted on one or two […]
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