“The moral test of a government is how it treats those who are at the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the aged; and those who are in the shadow of life, the sick and the needy, and the handicapped.” – Hubert Humphrey
passionate pachyderms
Pharmacist Steve steve@steveariens.com 502.938.2414
A pharmacist posted this. In what business would a -84% profit be acceptable? Imagine what would happen to any business where the middlemen who own similar businesses were allowed to take the profits of their competition and make them lose money for providing a service to patients! This is what’s happening to our pharmacists. This is unethical and must be stopped. PBMS such as Optum RX, CVS Caremark, and Express Scripts are doing this daily to your trusted pharmacists! Independent pharmacists’ survival is our survival. The ability to have patient care from a business without shareholders is vital to our lives and the future of pharmaceutical care and health care in general. Dear PBMs, employers, and insurance co’s, per consumer reports, PATIENTS PREFER INDEPENDENT PHARMACY! The original tweet: ” #ExpressScripts. Killing pharmacy 1 Advair diskus at a time. Hope UPMC Health Plan sees what their #PBM is doing to the small businesses that serve their customers”
The World Health Organization (WHO) launched the World Patient Safety Day on September 17 in the hopes of making the public become aware of the growing issue on medical errors that negatively impacts healthcare. About 2.6 million people belonging to the middle- and low-income countries die every year because of incorrect medical treatment, according to a recent report.
“No one should be harmed while receiving healthcare,“ Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General, said.
Dr. Ghebreyesus added that at least five of patients’ lives are being claimed by unsafe care every minute.
Misdiagnosis, wrong prescriptions and medication errors are the most common reasons of these medical harm. Four out of 10 patients in primary care as well as those in outpatient treatment experience treatment errors, according to the report issued by WHO.
Prescribing the wrong list of medications has accounted for $42 billion annually and high-risk surgical procedures caused one million deaths in people each year, per the report. The WHO emphasized that improving patient safety would significantly cut the financial cost.
Once people get admitted to the hospital, they are exposed to potential medical errors. So how would one safeguard oneself or their loved ones from such harm?
It would be best to have someone by your side in order to protect yourself from suffering from incorrect medical treatment.
Raising questions regarding the medications given before taking them such as its indications and doses will also help. Healthcare providers would be willing to supply the necessary information out of diligence to make certain that they are also doing their job correctly.
According to research, about one out of five elderly patients in the U.S. are harmed by medical care. Those who are experiencing medical injury have almost doubled the rate of deaths in contrast to those who are receiving proper treatment.
This is the first time that I had tried to use FB LIVE… apparently I did it correctly.
Tonight we went to this dinner theater … Todd Herendeen – for years he has been a local entertainer and a year or two ago he opened his own dinner theater. We had seen him once before at a different venue and we have been so involved with the repair/renovation of our condo since Hurricane Michael, and we needed a break from the action. This time of year, he only has normally has only one show a week.. because this is “slow season” here at the beach, but the attendance was nearly a full house.
He is very good impersonator/entertainer… doing Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Willie Nelson and of course ELVIS.
The FB live that I posted was two of his Elvis songs.
Todd is very interactive with the audience and the show which was suppose to be TWO HOURS… lasted 2.5 HOURS.
The meal is catered by a local pofolks restaurant/catering http://www.pofolks.net/catering.aspx The food was good “country cooking”… beef tips and rice, fried chicken, green beans and apple pie. After all the FL panhandle is pretty deep “in the south”.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is the latest agency being ordered to accommodate hemp legalization using a budget maneuver.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, announced Thursday he is championing a requirement that the DEA “identify or develop on-the-spot field testing technologies” to distinguish hemp from marijuana.
The need for speedier cannabis tests has bedeviled law enforcement nationwide since Congress changed the plant’s classification last year in the 2018 Farm Bill.
Cannabis varieties with no more than 0.3% THC are considered legal hemp and are no longer controlled substances, making police tests that check only for the presence of THC inadequate.
The requirement came as an amendment to a larger spending measure and has yet to be adopted by the full Senate.
Members of Congress frequently use budget amendments to direct administrative agencies to act.
Earlier this month, McConnell promoted a separate budget amendment telling the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to issue an “enforcement discretion policy and appropriate regulatory activities” on the sale of hemp-derived CBD products.
The Food and Drug Administration is asking the DEA to help with the ongoing investigation into a lung illness outbreak linked to vaping.
The FDA wants the DEA to help crack down on the supply side of the crisis because health experts have linked the illnesses to black market cannabis vape cartridges.
Health experts are increasingly focusing on illicit cannabis cartridges that are cut with vitamin E acetate, a thickening agent that resembles marijuana oil.
“To be clear, if we determine that someone is manufacturing or distributing illicit, adulterated products that caused illness or death for personal profit, we would consider that a criminal act,” acting FDA Commissioner Dr. Ned Sharpless testified before the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Wednesday.
Last week, the FDA launched a criminal investigation focused on the black market makers of the cartridges.
In the past month, law enforcement has busted at least two major distributors of counterfeit, black market cannabis cartridges.
More than 53o people have been sickened by the mysterious lung illness, and at least nine people have died. In a vast majority of the cases, the patients vaped black market cannabis cartridges.
The lungs do not like a non-aqueous substance ( oil based)… they tend to “clog” the alveoli in the lungs.. the more that get clogged the more difficulty the lungs have in facilitating the air in the lungs and transporting it to the person’s arterial system.. thus the person basically suffocates and DIES.
It is amazing that a reported NINE DEATHS is a CRISIS and yet that many or more people gets shot/killed in CHICAGO on the average WEEKEND… yet when the last time that you have heard about a SHOOTING CRISIS IN CHICAGO on the national news ?
Anhedonia is a diverse array of deficits in hedonic function, including reduced motivation or ability to experience pleasure. While earlier definitions of anhedonia emphasized the inability to experience pleasure, anhedonia is used by researchers to refer to reduced motivation, reduced anticipatory pleasure, reduced consummatory pleasure, and deficits in reinforcement
Featuring David S. Fink, MPhil, MPH, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University; Kate M. Nicholson, JD, Civil rights attorney and pain patient advocate; Nathan Freed Wessler, JD, Staff attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project; Patience Moyo, PhD, Assistant Professor, Brown University School of Public Health; moderated by Jeffrey A. Singer, MD, Senior Fellow, Cato Institute.
Prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMPs) operate in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. These statewide electronic databases of prescriptions dispensed for controlled substances were established in response to the opioid overdose crisis. Their purpose is to facilitate drug diversion investigations by law enforcement, change prescribing behavior, and reduce “doctor shopping” by patients who seek drugs for nonmedical use. In 28 states it is mandatory for providers to access the database and screen each time before prescribing any controlled substance to any patient. There is evidence that PDMPs have contributed to the dramatic 42 percent decline in prescription opioid volume since 2011. Many healthcare practitioners cite the inconvenience and workflow disruptions of mandatory-access PDMPs as deterrents to prescribing, while others fear scrutiny from law enforcement and licensing authorities — even for appropriate medical prescribing. This is unintentionally causing the undertreatment of patients with acute and chronic pain and, in some cases, the abrupt withdrawal of treatment from chronic pain patients. There is also evidence that PDMPs increase crime by driving nonmedical users from diverted prescription opioids to more harmful heroin and fentanyl, thus fueling overdoses. Finally, PDMPs pose a serious risk to medical privacy by allowing law enforcement to access confidential medical records without a warrant based on probable cause, which may be in violation of the Fourth Amendment. There is also the Columbia, SC pharmacies for medical assistance.
An expert panel will examine the positive and negative effects of PDMPs on patient care, patient privacy, the overdose rate, and crime, hoping to learn whether they do more harm than good.
