Fox cable now up to FOUR regular contributors that are PRO-OPIATE

Posted on October 3, 2019 by Pharmaciststeve

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Rite Aid Integrates NarxCare Analytics Directly into its Pharmacist’s Workflow in 12 States

Posted on October 3, 2019 by Pharmaciststeve

Rite Aid Integrates NarxCare Analytics Directly into its Pharmacist’s Workflow in 12 States

https://www.valdostadailytimes.com/news/business/rite-aid-integrates-narxcare-analytics-directly-into-its-pharmacist-s/article_a2e7f76a-3011-5dc4-a51a-ae5910c09459.html

Rite Aid today announced a partnership with Appriss Health, provider of the most comprehensive analytics platform for opioid stewardship and substance use disorder (SUD) in the U.S., to deploy NarxCare into clinical workflow. Rite Aid has effectively implemented NarxCare in 12 States, including all of its Pennsylvania locations.

NarxCare utilizes, analyzes, and presents information from State Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMP) to enable pharmacists to more efficiently and effectively identify and manage patients at risk for Controlled Substance Misuse and Abuse. NarxCare equips pharmacists with advanced analytics, tools, technology, and invaluable insights that are presented and accessed directly within Rite Aid’s pharmacy management system.

NarxCare also provides machine learning and artificial intelligence-based patient risk analysis in a visually interactive format to support pharmacists’ dispensing decisions and state law compliance.

“NarxCare is another efficient and effective solution to help our pharmacists make responsible dispensing decisions, while mitigating possible controlled substance misuse or abuse,”

said Jocelyn Konrad, executive vice president, pharmacy and retail operations, Rite Aid. “The integration of NarxCare and PDMP information into our pharmacist’s workflow empowers them to focus more on building relationships with patients and improving health and wellness across the communities they serve.”

“At Rite Aid, patient safety and compliance are important priorities,” said Rob Cohen, President, Appriss Health. “We applaud Rite Aid’s efforts to rapidly deploy technologies to help reduce potential customer risk by leveraging the state PDMPs, utilizing an advanced analytics platform, and integrating these solutions seamlessly into their pharmacists’ daily workflow.”

While pharmacists have access to PDMP information, it can be difficult to navigate and analyze. With NarxCare in place, pharmacists are able to identify potential problems up front, in real-time, for every customer, every time they consider a controlled substance dispensation.

Pharmacists also have the support they need to better engage with their customers and determine the best course of action for them, while fulfilling their corresponding responsibility to ensure all controlled substances are filled for a legitimate medical purpose pursuant to a valid prescription within the scope of the prescriber’s practice.

About Rite Aid Corporation

Rite Aid Corporation, which generated fiscal 2019 annual revenue of $21.6 billion, is one of the nation’s leading drugstore chains with 2,464 stores in 18 states and pharmacy benefit management (PBM) capabilities through EnvisionRxOptions and its affiliates. At Rite Aid we have a personal interest in our customers’ health and wellness and deliver the products and services they need to lead healthier lives. Information about Rite Aid, including corporate background and press releases, is available through the company’s website at www.riteaid.com.

When Appriss Health first announced the introductions of Narxcare their PR releases seems to imply that they were going to include data on a person from any and all databases they could have access to… including not only PMP’s but also and/all electronic medical/health records and many/all public records, which could include arrest and other legal records.

As of today, their website on Narxcare  https://apprisshealth.com/solutions/narxcare/ there is no mention of those other databases being accessed and/or used to come to their determination of a “abuse risk score”.

Healthcare providers and pts are still having to deal with the inability of healthcare professionals to “validate” who they are really treating.  With the prevalence of stolen/fake/forged/fabricated ID’s…  Could the data filed under those non-validated ID’s cause some legit pts to be labeled unjustly as a potential substance abuser.

We have seen what the DEA has done with the CDC opiate dosing guidelines and seemingly come to the conclusion that they are now a valid standard of care and best practices and is disregarding the statements by the CDC and FDA that those guidelines have been grossly misapplied and continuing to apply their original determination as to the appropriateness that any healthcare practitioner not following those guidelines, are in fact providing controlled substances for illegitimate reasons.

There are other alternatives that could add a layer of positive ID on a person  https://www.clearme.com/  that is being used by airports/TSA for IDing a person using digital finger prints and facial recognition.  It wouldn’t really matter whoever the person claims is their name when they first sign up for this service…they will always be that person when using that service.  This system could put a serious dent in the business plan of the serious substance abuser or diverter getting prescription opiates and controlled substances via a legal route.

If this system is good enough for the TSA/airports to ID people, why isn’t all those bureaucrats complaining about all the opiate OD’s and deaths… not considering it for healthcare ?  Unless they are really happy with the status quo ?

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I want everyone to know exactly what our Drs are going through, and why so many are scared to prescribe pain meds

Posted on October 2, 2019 by Pharmaciststeve

I want everyone to know exactly what our Drs are going through, and why so many are scared to prescribe pain meds

 

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D.E.A. Let Opioid Production Surge as Crisis Grew, Justice Dept. Says

Posted on October 2, 2019 by Pharmaciststeve

D.E.A. Let Opioid Production Surge as Crisis Grew, Justice Dept. Says

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/01/us/dea-opioid-crisis.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/01/us/dea-opioid-crisis.html

The Drug Enforcement Administration authorized large increases in the production of painkillers even as the number of opioid-related deaths in the United States soared, the Justice Department’s inspector general said in a harsh review on Tuesday.

The watchdog office said that the D.E.A. was “slow to respond” to the opioid crisis, adding that more than 300,000 Americans have died of opioid overdoses since 2000.

“We found that the rate of opioid overdose deaths in the United States grew, on average, by 8 percent per year from 1999 through 2013 and by 71 percent per year from 2013 through 2017,” the review said. “Yet, from 2003 through 2013 D.E.A. was authorizing manufacturers to produce substantially larger amounts of opioids.”

The D.E.A., an arm of the Justice Department, is the federal agency that most directly oversees access to opioids.

“D.E.A. is responsible for regulating opioid production quotas and investigating its illegal diversion,” Michael E. Horowitz, the inspector general, said in a video on Tuesday. “We found that D.E.A. was slow to respond to this growing public health crisis and that its regulatory and enforcement efforts could have been more effective.”

For example, he said, the agency increased production quotas for oxycodone production by about 400 percent from 2002 to 2013, despite evidence that opioids were being overprescribed and misused.

The report said the D.E.A. did not capture enough timely data on opioid abuse or other drug trends. It also noted that the agency had “recently taken steps to address the opioid epidemic, but more work remains.”

A spokeswoman for the D.E.A. said in a statement that the agency “appreciates the O.I.G.’s assessment of the programs involved in the report and the opportunity to discuss improvements made to increase the regulatory and enforcement efforts to control the diversion of opioids.”

“The D.E.A. uses a wide variety of tools — administrative, civil and criminal — to fight the diversion of controlled substances,” she added. “While only a minute fraction of the more than 1.8 million manufacturers, distributors, pharmacies and prescribers registered with D.E.A. are involved in unlawful activity, D.E.A. continuously works to identify and root out the bad actors.”

The report noted that in 2013, there was a sharp decline in the D.E.A.’s issuance of immediate suspension orders, which it called the agency’s “strongest enforcement tool” because the orders can stop companies from distributing drugs.

The agency has attributed that decline to the end of two major operations in 2012, and it said in its statement on Tuesday that it had removed about 900 registrations, which are essentially licenses to handle controlled substances, every year for the past eight years.

Andrew Kolodny, a director of opioid policy research at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University who also testifies as an expert for government plaintiffs against pharmaceutical companies, said the review did not address the problems at the root of the opioid crisis — such as over-prescription of painkillers — because it was narrowly focused on the D.E.A.

“When you read the report, what you really don’t get out of it is that in almost every way in which the D.E.A. failed — except for the fact that they could have managed their data better — you have pharmaceutical industry and distributor industry influence,” he said.

The inspector general’s review comes at a critical moment in federal opioid litigation: A consolidation of nearly 2,300 cases from cities, counties and tribes nationwide seeking reparations for the epidemic.

The first trial, set to begin in Cleveland this month, pits two hard-hit Ohio counties against an array of drug manufacturers, distributors and retailers, which the plaintiffs blame for the crisis. But in laying substantial blame at the feet of the D.E.A., the inspector general has, in effect, given the drug industry defendants a powerful retort on the eve of trial.

Jan Hoffman contributed reporting.

some claim that a definition of SOCIALISM is when a bureaucracy CREATES a problem and then CREATE another/new/larger bureaucracy charged with dealing with the crisis that the bureaucracy created in the first place

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Where your Rx dollars are really going to – pharmacy shows NEGATIVE 81% PROFIT

Posted on September 30, 2019 by Pharmaciststeve

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”

 

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Dr Feldman: announced lawsuits against numerous state medical boards

Posted on September 30, 2019 by Pharmaciststeve

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Start listening at abt 28 minutes

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Pain Pts should not be treated like addicts..It’s WRONG !

Posted on September 30, 2019 by Pharmaciststeve

https://taniafortexas.com/

 

 

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Five People Die Every Minute Due To Medical Harm, WHO Reports

Posted on September 30, 2019 by Pharmaciststeve

Five People Die Every Minute Due To Medical Harm, WHO Reports

https://www.medicaldaily.com/five-people-die-every-minute-due-medical-harm-who-reports-443406

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.

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Todd Herendeen Dinner Theater Panama City Beach FL

Posted on September 27, 2019 by Pharmaciststeve

http://toddallenshow.com/

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”.

Price for the dinner/show is a reasonable $40.00 per person.   https://www.toddherendeentheatre.com/

You can reserve tickets for the show only for $28.00

 

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WA: published opiate dosing guidelines ?

Posted on September 26, 2019 by Pharmaciststeve

 

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