HRSA begins 340B audits -are you prepared? The passage of the federal 340B drug discount program in 1992 gave the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) authority to audit hospital pharmacies enrolled in the program, but the HRSA has only recently begun to exercise its authority. The 340B program allows qualified pharmacies and health care […]
New Diet Drugs Slug it Out on the Prescription Market -What’s the Difference? For the first time in 13 years, the FDA has approved two new prescription diet drugs Belviq, manufactured by Arena Pharmaceuticals, and Qsymia, from Vivus Pharmaceuticals. While both drugs are designed for weight loss, they are by no means the same.
Mail Order Drugs – Why isn’t this issue in the national spotlight? A comment on a recent blog post about the Express Scripts/Medco merger brought up a point so important it deserved its own post. Why are mail order drugs even allowed by law? Stephen Logsdon, Pharm.D. wrote: “With regard to mandatory mail, here in […]
New Reports Up the Ante on Sedentary Lifestyles The link between inactivity, obesity, poor health, and death is well known. People who spend their days sitting suffer from obesity, diabetes, organ damage, circulatory illnesses, and heart disease. The Lancet recently published a series of articles about the pandemic of physical inactivity that are well worth […]
GSK Pleads Guilty Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline recently plead guilty to health care fraud and agreed to pay the largest settlement of its kind ever – $3 billion. The plea included three separate counts, two involving putting misbranded antidepressants (Paxil and Wellbutrin) on the market, and one count of failing to report safety information to the […]
Lowering the Risk of Breast Cancer Recently, researchers at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill gave us a whole new reason to advocate exercise. They studied the records of over 3,000 women encompassing a 20-year period and found a remarkable correlation between exercise and reduced risk of breast cancer. Study participants included a […]
Yet Another Benefit for Coffee Drinkers? A new study published in the American Association for Cancer Research journal Cancer Research suggests that drinking more coffee could lower the risk of developing basal cell carcinoma, the most common type of skin cancer. This isn’t the first health benefit linked to caffeinated coffee. Other studies link benefits […]
Will GOP states reject the Affordable Care Act in defiance of the Supreme Court ruling? The Supreme Court’s decision to uphold or strike down the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was guaranteed to be controversial either way, but the real surprise came in the aftermath when 10 Republican governors announced that they would refuse to implement […]
