Filed under: General Problems | 5 Comments »
84 yo Native American Veteran cut off his pain pills. Tragic and disgusting
Posted on July 1, 2020 by Pharmaciststeve
CVS: Anything for a buck ?
Posted on July 1, 2020 by Pharmaciststeve
I just thought I’d share this info with you. You may post anonymously if appropriate.
My store is a covid testing store! Initially, there was a cap on # of tests we did per day. Things got somewhat difficult, since a tech spent 10 mins approximately to get test done. So 20 X10 = 200 tech minutes lost. We survived that, so CVS decided to lift the cap. We now have a tech administering tests all day, therefore we loose 9 tech hours ( testing occurs from 9am -6pm). No extra help provided! We are now behind in our daily script filling! Staff is stressed including pharmacist & techs! Front store is tired of ringing for us. Customers are calling from drive through yelling because it’s taking so long to pick up Rx.
This plan was supposed to help minute clinic testing volume. It’s a nightmare. Pharmacist must add ice packs to testing sample box to maintain temperature,this means leaving the building, walking in front of cars at DT to place ice in collection box!
Testing info is recorded on the Epic hospital system which was added to our already antiquated cvs system.
The final straw for me was yesterday. I heard a tech telling patient you must sign up on cvs.com & you must indicate you have at least one symptom. So I say they should not lie about symptoms. Her response DL told us to tell them that!!! One guy is getting tested weekly! WTH! Anything for a buck CVS!
Filed under: General Problems | 1 Comment »
celebrating 50 years as a Pharmacist
Posted on July 1, 2020 by Pharmaciststeve
50 years ago this month, after 5 yrs and 168 academic hours and 2000 hrs of working in a pharmacy… I headed off to Frankfort Kentucky to take my first “boards”. 1970 was the first year of “national pharmacy boards”, before this year the Pharmacy boards in the various states designed their own tests that had to be passed in order to be licensed in the state. Kentucky was one of the first… if not the first to use this national board testing. I had graduated from Butler University Pharmacy school just abt 5 weeks earlier.
There was no tutorial books to prepare for this test, there was no one who had taken the board the year before to ask about what was on it.. I was one of the “guinea pig” recent pharmacy graduates that was the first to take this national test. NO PRESSURE HERE !
The first day – a Monday – started very early and I remember having to compound some meds and the day ended late that night with the “orals” portion of the test… the pharmacy board members individually questioned us about our knowledge of pharmacy. The next day started early and we were given either 4 different written tests or 6 different written tests… totally 6 hrs… no restroom break, no meal break… and you got done around 2 PM… and drove back to our home in Southern Indiana.
It did not take them long to grade the tests… by the end of the same week, you were suppose to get a letter from the KY Board of Pharmacy… One thing that everyone knew was that when you got that letter out of your mailbox.. and if your name on the envelope did not have R.Ph. (Registered Pharmacy) behind your name… you didn’t have to even have to open the envelope…. because you knew that you didn’t pass. Luckily mine had those initials on the envelope and I had achieved a passing grade of 87 !!! I could exhale !!
I had just went from $2.00/hr working as a pharmacy student to $235.00/wk…. working as a Pharmacist. My income had just about TRIPLED !!! I had a job lined up at a small regional chain that I had been working summers since after my second year in pharmacy school.
Filed under: General Problems | 2 Comments »
Is Walgreens monetizing personal data from their pt$/cu$tomer$ ?
Posted on June 30, 2020 by Pharmaciststeve
Walgreens steps up Microsoft partnership, adds Adobe deal to roll out new digital tools
Walgreens Boots Alliance is expanding its 18-month partnership with Microsoft to roll out new technology tools to personalize the healthcare and retail experiences for its 100 million customers.
Working with the tech giant and Adobe, the drugstore company plans to implement new customer analytics and outreach tools to help it better serve customers.
The digital experience and customer insights platform will advance Walgreens into the second phase of its digital transformation, the company said.
“At WBA, our mission is to deliver extraordinary experiences that enrich our customers’ lives. Capabilities to combine previously disparate customer data sets, including information from more than 100 million members of our loyalty programs, into a more singular, unified view of the customer—powered by these modern technology platforms—will enable us to truly personalize our omnichannel healthcare and retail offering,” said Vineet Mehra, global chief marketing officer at Walgreens Boots Alliance.
Walgreens announced its partnership with Microsoft last year to develop new healthcare delivery models, including technology and retail innovations to disrupt the healthcare delivery space.
The strategic partnership with Microsoft and the new deal with Adobe allows Walgreens to harness insights to deliver more engaging and personalized experiences while respecting and protecting the privacy choices of patients and customers, the company said.
Walgreens and other drugstore giants have been feeling the pressure from pharmacy competitors Walmart and Amazon, which bought PillPack in 2018.
Walgreens’ new digital capabilities also help give the company a leg up against emerging pharmacy startups such as Capsule.
“There’s no denying that the retail industry has been in a constant state of change over the past several years and consumers expect personalized interactions, connected online and in-store experiences, and high-quality customer service when they shop,” said Shelley Bransten, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for retail and consumer goods industries, in a statement.
In a recent interview, Rick Gates, Walgreens’ senior vice president of pharmacy and healthcare, said industry collaborations will be valuable as Walgreens continues to innovate during the COVID-19 health crisis and after the crisis subsidies. SEO personal injury can help law firms stand out in competitive search engine results.
“The need to accelerate the pace of innovation is going to be very important. There is going to be a lot more collaboration to solve things quickly and it’s going to be less about building things yourself,” Gates told Fierce Healthcare.
Walgreens plans to leverage Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 and Power Platform along with the Adobe Experience Cloud to collect data and develop customer profiles to engage customers and create personalized experiences.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 will serve as Walgreens’ customer data platform to provide a unified, 360-degree view of the customer while Adobe’s customer experience management solutions will enable the company to deliver those experiences through the industry’s only end-to-end solution for analytics, content management, personalization and campaign orchestration, Walgreens said.
The company plans to launch an individually tailored prescription experience for patients at Walgreens. It will also roll out a bespoke beauty experience for customers by enabling Boots Beauty Consultants to provide custom product recommendations.
The new platform also will power the company’s strategic initiative around mass personalization—delivering the right offers and content to the right customer whether they shop in the store, online or through the mobile app.
“COVID-19 has created a world that is more digital while redefining the value of physical stores,” said Anil Chakravarthy, Adobe’s executive vice president and general manager for its digital experience business, in a statement.
The deal with Adobe will help the retail and pharmacy giant better blend online and offline customer experiences, Chakravarthy said.
Filed under: General Problems | Leave a Comment »
hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine can prevent COVID-19
Posted on June 30, 2020 by Pharmaciststeve
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/933227
HCQ Trial to Resume
A global randomized controlled trial testing whether the antimalarial drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine can prevent COVID-19 in healthcare workers or other high-risk workers will resume, Reuters reports. The UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency had paused the COPCOV trial after another British trial found hydroxychloroquine to have no benefit for already-infected COVID-19 patients.
“Hydroxychloroquine could still prevent infections, and this needs to be determined in a randomized controlled trial,” said the trial’s co-leader. “The question whether (it) can prevent COVID-19 or not remains as pertinent as ever.”
Filed under: General Problems | Leave a Comment »
NACDS urges mandatory electronic prescriptions for controlled substances
Posted on June 30, 2020 by Pharmaciststeve
NACDS urges mandatory electronic prescriptions for controlled substances
https://drugstorenews.com/nacds-urges-mandatory-electronic-prescriptions-controlled-substances
The National Association of Chain Drug Stores is urging the Drug Enforcement Administration to make electronic prescriptions for controlled substances, or EPCS mandatory.
In comments on the reopening of the Interim Final Rule for EPCS, the organization described the significant benefits associated with EPCS and recommendations on how best to achieve them.
“For more than 20 years NACDS has collaborated with DEA on the development and implementation of policies and standards for EPCS. We remain committed to the use of electronic prescriptions for all medications, especially controlled substances,” NACDS wrote.
NACDS noted that further DEA action would build on an NACDS-backed federal law that requires electronic prescribing of controlled substances in Medicare Part D, beginning in 2021. It also would build on NACDS-backed action by more than half of the states to require electronic prescribing of opioids, all controlled substances, or all prescriptions.
In addition, the organization also strongly supports the use of electronic prescribing as an important tool to improve safety and security in the prescribing process and to combat the abuse, misuse and diversion of controlled substances.
Significant benefits of electronic prescribing include: safeguards against unauthorized changes, reproduction and diversion of controlled substance prescriptions; further reductions in medication errors; improved patient care and outcomes — including clinical decision-making at the point of care; enhanced workflow in healthcare settings; and cost savings due to improved patient outcomes.
NACDS’ recommendations for enhancing the rule flow from the fact that pharmacies have been engaged in the effective use of electronic prescribing for quite some time and modifications in the rule are necessary to reflect the advancements that pharmacies have made. NACDS recommends changes to the audit requirements for software applications to make them consistent with pharmacies’ current practices in ensuring the use of the latest technologies, and to prevent duplicative and unproductive audits.
“Pharmacies remain absolutely committed to serving as a part of the solution to opioid abuse and addiction,” NACDS president and CEO, Steve Anderson said. “Considering the significant and substantial benefits of EPCS, further action by the DEA to make electronic prescriptions mandatory is the logical next step in helping to address this ongoing issue, and in improving patient health outcomes in every community.”
While the DEA allows a pharmacy to legally do a electronical transfer a C-II prescription to another pharmacy, if the first pharmacy receiving the electronic Rx from the prescriber doesn’t have stock or the Pharmacist is “not comfortable” filling the Rx. They cannot print out a valid C-II Rx because to be legal it has to have a signature from the prescriber. The potential catch here if the pharmacy can’t/won’t fill the C-II, is that their computer software has not been updated to allow the electronic transfer to another pharmacy and/or a particular state has laws that prohibit such transfers and/or not updated their state laws to conform with national DEA laws.
There is also the possibility that some pharmacists that don’t like to fill controlled meds could tell the pt that there is no way that they can transfer the Rx or give the pt a copy and they are out of stock.
Other electronically sent controlled substance Rxs (C-III thru C-V) and other Rxs for all other Rx only meds can be verbally transferred to another pharmacy, if the first pharmacy can’t/won’t fill the Rx.
Filed under: General Problems | Leave a Comment »
COVID-19 drug remdesivir to cost $3,120 for typical patient on private insurance
Posted on June 29, 2020 by Pharmaciststeve
COVID-19 drug remdesivir to cost $3,120 for typical patient on private insurance
https://www.foxbusiness.com/healthcare/covid-drug-remdesivir-private-insurance
Gilead Sciences Inc. detailed its pricing plans for Covid-19 drug remdesivir, saying it will charge U.S. hospitals $3,120 for a typical patient with commercial insurance.
The drugmaker on Monday disclosed its pricing plans as it prepares to begin charging for the drug in July. The U.S. has been distributing remdesivir donated by Gilead since the drug was authorized for emergency use in May.
| Ticker | Security | Last | Change | Change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GILD | GILEAD SCIENCES INC. | 74.56 | -0.01 | -0.01% |
Under the company’s plans, Gilead will charge a higher price for patients with private insurance in the U.S., and a lower price for U.S. government health programs like Medicare and all other developed countries that insure their patients directly.
The government price will be $390 per dose or $2,340 per patient for the shortest treatment course and $4,290 for a longer treatment course.
Gilead said in the U.S. it will charge nongovernment buyers such as hospitals about $520 per dose, or a third more than the government price, for patients who are commercially insured. That works out to $3,120 for a patient getting the shorter, more common course of treatment, and $5,720 for the longer treatment duration.
The U.S. is the only developed country where Gilead will charge two prices, Gilead Chief Executive Daniel O’Day said in an interview. In other nations, governments negotiate drug prices directly with drugmakers. “The logic is that we wanted a single government price around the developed world,” Mr. O’Day said.
In this March 2020 photo provided by Gilead Sciences, a vial of the investigational drug remdesivir is visually inspected at a Gilead manufacturing site in the U.S. (Gilead Sciences via AP)
The higher price for U.S. commercially insured patients is because government health programs such as Medicaid typically receive statutorily-defined discounts off the prices companies receive in the private market.
“This medicine is priced far below the value it brings to health-care systems and that’s true for private payers and government payers,” Mr. O’Day said.
On average, the drug should help reduce hospital costs by $12,000 per patient, he said. Gilead estimated the savings based on data showing that each day of hospitalization costs $3,000 and that patients taking remdesivir are discharged four days sooner than those receiving standard treatment, Mr. O’Day said.
Covid-19 patients get two doses of remdesivir by infusion on the first day, and one dose daily afterward. The shortest treatment course is five days, while a longer treatment course takes 10 days.
Currently, 90% to 95% of patients receive five-day treatment courses, Mr. O’Day said.
Remdesivir is the first antiviral drug shown to be effective at treating Covid-19 in a major clinical trial, reducing patients’ recovery times by four days compared with the placebo group in a large study funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
So far, few other drugs have proven in human testing to help coronavirus patients. One drug that recently produced positive results in a clinical trial was the steroid dexamethasone.
The drug, which treats Covid-19 by a different mechanism than remdesivir, has been on the U.S. market for decades to treat other diseases. It hasn’t been authorized in the U.S. to treat Covid-19, but doctors are allowed to prescribe it “off-label” under U.S. regulations.
Given its unique status, remdesivir’s pricing has been widely anticipated–and hotly debated–among doctors, health insurers and investors. It could serve as the starting point for other drugs that eventually prove to safely treat coronavirus patients.
The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, a nonprofit group that analyzes pharmaceutical prices, said last week that a cost-effective price for remdesivir would be $2,520 to $2,800 per patient if dexamethasone becomes a standard medication for Covid-19.
Without dexamethasone, a cheap generic medication, remdesivir would be cost-effective at a range of $4,580 to $5,080 a patient, ICER said.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on May 1 authorized emergency use of remdesivir through the course of the pandemic. Gilead plans to seek a full, permanent approval.
In July, Gilead will start charging for the drug, but federal and state officials will continue deciding which hospitals receive it. In September, Gilead expects to have enough supply to meet demand and will distribute the drug in the same way it distributes other medicines.
One issue that has already factored into debate over what remdesivir should cost is the U.S. government’s role in funding its development.
The NIAID funded the study that showed it sped the recovery of hospitalized Covid-19 patients, and expects to spend at least $30 million on the study through the end of the fiscal year, an NIAID spokesman said in February.
Gilead has also invested in researching remdesivir. The company previously developed the drug to treat Ebola patients, but it didn’t work as well as other drugs. Gilead and other researchers explored remdesivir’s Covid-19 use after the virus emerged.
Gilead has said it spent about $50 million on research and development related to the drug in the first quarter, or about 4.5% of its total R&D spend. Through the end of 2020, Gilead expects to spend more than $1 billion on developing and manufacturing remdesivir, Mr. O’Day said.
Some generic drugmakers have said they plan to charge less than $1,000 per treatment course in India and Bangladesh, where Gilead has licensed rights to sell the drug. ICER estimates that the raw materials needed to make remdesivir cost about $10 per patient for a 10-day treatment course, citing a recent academic paper
Write to Joseph Walker at joseph.walker@wsj.com
Filed under: General Problems | 2 Comments »
Here is another EPIDEMIC… chain pharmacists… JUST SAYING NO to filling controlled Rxs
Posted on June 29, 2020 by Pharmaciststeve
Sir I’ve been trying To get my prescription filled,, but the pharmacy keeps turning it down C V S, Walgreens, and Walmart.. I’m a amputee with Fandom pain and constant burning, plus on Dialysis 3 times a week.. I’ve been on my pain killers for over 5 years and now they don’t want to give them to me. What options do I have. please Help me
Are we drifting back to the “Reagan years” ? Maybe the spirit of Nancy Reagan is haunting many that have a pharmacy/pharmacist license. This woman is from Texas and I wonder why people keep going back to chain stores ? Do they like to be abused and intimidated ?
Once again here is website that will help “abused chain pts” to find a independent pharmacy https://ncpa.org/pharmacy-locator
Filed under: General Problems | 7 Comments »
A recent study found steroid injections for a common condition could be causing more harm than good
Posted on June 29, 2020 by Pharmaciststeve
Filed under: General Problems | 8 Comments »
some chain pharmacy generating business by making sick employees to keep on working ?
Posted on June 29, 2020 by Pharmaciststeve
Hello there, I’m reaching out to you because I feel that there is seriously something wrong with Walgreens right now. I wish to remain anonymous please.
I’m in the DFW area and as you may already know, Texas has had a huge surge of COVID-19 cases. Saturday night, I had 3 of my techs coming down with symptoms. I asked Walgreens what to do? “Go see their primary care doctor and pharmacy stays open.” Is there a way to get them fast tracked for testing? “They need to see their primary care doctor first.” With how my tech’s symptoms are and THREE of down coming down with the same symptoms at the same time, I am positive that it is COVID19 yet Walgreens has refused to do anything. No doctors are going to be open on the weekend for such late notice COVID testing. Walgreens will not close the pharmacy, they will not do a deep cleaning, they do not allow us that extra time to clean before and after closing. I’m so tight on hours that if I have my techs stay after closing to clean, I would be over my budget. I’m really damned if I do damned if I don’t. I had to advise my other techs to make an appointment at CVS to get themselves tested for COVID because it takes 2-3 days to make an appointment. Isn’t that sad? As Walgreens employees we have to go to CVS to get tested. My worst fear is, there is a technician at another store who tested positive, that Walgreens still is operating like normal. Nothing was done. Walgreens does not care about its customers nor their employees by pretending that there’s nothing wrong when there is a positive COVID case. I feel like we need to call out this behavior because it really is detrimental to our community as a whole. Who knows how many other Walgreens is doing this?
Filed under: General Problems | 2 Comments »