Chain Pharmacy

Collaborative practice agreements between physicians and pharmacists will be a reality in Pennsylvania within the next couple of years.

A survey of new Rx, new generic, and new OTC products

San Francisco had the right idea when it banned the sale of tobacco in pharmacies. Then it turned around and allowed the sale in grocery stores and big-box stores. Wal-Mart and Safeway have pharmacies, and they keep on selling cigarettes. Forcing drugstores to take the high road is a lost cause.

The Washington State Board of Pharmacy is revisiting its rules requiring pharmacists to dispense emergency contraceptives.

In a novel collaboration with PBM giant CVS Caremark and its specialty pharmacy Generation Health, PGXL Laboratories will use its expertise in anticoagulants to improve the quality of patient care through pharmacogenetic testing, physician education, and drug-specific software programs.

While genetic testing can identify patients who will be nonresponsive to certain drug therapies, it can also suggest other drugs as treatment options that might work. These may include pharmaceuticals not usually considered for treatment of a particular cancer.

Generic manufacturers and consumer budgets are the big winners in the ongoing voluntary recall of millions of packages of pediatric liquid medications manufactured by McNeil Consumer Healthcare.

With so many best-selling name-brand drugs coming off patent over the next few years, the market for generics should expand markedly. In Drug Topics' special generics supplement, pharmacists from around the country offer their views.

The generic market is likely to remain very strong between now and 2015, but the combination of healthcare reform and a lack of significant drugs coming off patent means that the outlook between 2015 and 2020 is murkier.

There are some big names among the brand drugs that have recently come off patent and joined the burgeoning generics market.

In a recent survey by Medco Health Solutions Inc., only 66% of 1,092 patients with insurance surveyed "agreed that a generic drug is the same as the brand-name medication - many patients are still not comfortable using a generic and others still consider brand-name drugs to be superior."

The latest pharmacy technologies include IVR, telepharmacy, cell-phone-based automatic refill reminders, a compact robotic dispenser, remote dispensing, and CPOE pharmacy management.

Use of bar-code technology is widespread in the general retail environment. Its advantages have not yet been fully exploited in the hospital and community-pharmacy settings.

With many pharmacists approaching retirement, positions are opening up. For professionals tasked with greater responsibility and longer working hours, greener pastures have an undeniable appeal. In this business climate, how can employers hold onto their pharmacy professionals?

During a typically busy day in the pharmacy, counseling every patient may be tough. But is it too much to answer questions politely - or help someone standing helpless in the OTC aisle?

Pharmacists are in a good position to tell patients that sand, water, snow, and clouds reflect and intensify the sun's rays, causing unsuspected sun damage, even in shade, and that protecting skin from sun damage should be incorporated into a daily routine.

An FDA advisory panel voted 20 to 12 to recommend that the agency allow rosiglitazone (Avandia, GlaxoSmithKline) to remain on the market.

Summer brings picnics, hikes, and trips to the water, along with sunburn, bug bites, and dry, itchy skin. For all that exposed skin, manufacturers offer several new skin-care aids.

Many pharmacies across the country have adopted new policies and procedures that focus more on patient care and outcomes. Included among these new options is administration of vaccines.

Most of us probably didn't pay a lot of attention to business majors when we were in college. Unfortunately, the business majors have far more influence over the practice of pharmacy today than pharmacists do, and it's going to be up to them to find a way out of the pickle our profession finds itself in.

A survey of new Rx, new generic, and new OTC products

In every pharmacy, continuous quality improvement is an essential safeguard. For two approaches that guarantee best practices, read on.

Numerous studies show that patients benefit from medication therapy management (MTM) services provided by pharmacists. The drawback to many programs is that it is financially difficult to offer them. In Wisconsin, however, clinical and retail pharmacists participating in the Pharmacy Society of Wisconsin's (PSW) MTM pilot project are reimbursed for the time they spend reviewing patients' formulary or explaining how patients should use drugs.

Although the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) creates an abbreviated approval pathway for biological products that are demonstrated to be ?highly similar? (biosimilar) to or ?interchangeable? with an FDA-approved biological product, only time will tell how long it will take for these biosimilars to reach the marketplace.

A systematic review assessing the comparative effectiveness of oral anti-diabetic drugs for preventing patients at high risk from progressing to type 2 diabetes has found glitazones (pioglitazone, rosiglitazone), biguanides (metformin), and alpha-glucosidase inhibitors (AGIs; acarbose, voglibose) reduced the relative risk of diabetes by as much as 63%, whereas insulin secretagogues (sulfonylureas and glinides) had no effect.

Sens. Kay R. Hagan (D-N.C.) and Al Franken (D-Minn.) have introduced The Medication Therapy Management (MTM) Expanded Benefits Act, a bill that will allow seniors with one chronic illness to thoroughly review all their medications with a pharmacist in a one-on-one session.

The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 greatly reduced FDA involvement in assessing the safety of dietary supplements, leaving pharmacists with the problem of obtaining accurate information with which to advise patients.

Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) skin patches containing low doses of estrogen carry less risk of stroke than oral therapy and may represent a safer alternative.

In the first of its "FDA Drug Info Rounds," a new series of educational videos for pharmacists, FDA is tackling unapproved dispensing of colchicine.

Inhaled insulin may be making a comeback. That's the hope at MannKind, a California-based biopharmaceutical company developing a rapid-acting inhaled insulin known as Afrezza (insulin human rDNA origin).