Leah E. Perry

As a flurry of blockbuster drugs lose their 20-year patent protection, the market is splitting wide open as drugmakers offer competing generic versions.

An Ohio hospital automates its pharmacy with an integrated medication management database.

Some believe it's not too late for community pharmacies to get into this field, which is growing by leaps and bounds.

An increasing number of community pharmacies are venturing into the specialty pharmacy arena. Despite what some industry experts describe as a fragmented marketplace, community pharmacy leaders say they are poised to take on and develop this segment of the industry and keep specialty drugs in their settings.

Recent years have seen dramatic growth in the specialty pharmacy market, a segment of the industry addressing the needs of patients with chronic illnesses such as cancer and HIV. Sales of specialty medications-though expensive, often injectable, and typically requiring more patient education-have trended upward at more than 25% annually for the past five years. Industry experts forecast annual increases of more than 30% through the rest of this decade, according to Armada Health Care, a specialty pharmacy group purchasing organization in Short Hills, N.J.

Because only some states now require hospitals to report their healthcare-associated infection (HAI) rates, while others don't, the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention is considering helping states develop policies to obtain this information. Lending support to this initiative is consumer demand for the public disclosure of HAI data.