Pharmacy Voices

Generic drugs used to be the golden goose for retail pharmacies. But with all of the changes taking place in the generic drug market, the new generic world requires that pharmacy owners remain flexible in their sourcing by examining pricing from several primary and secondary suppliers.

When you stop and think about how far we have come just in pharmacy in the 40 years since computers were first used to process prescriptions, it’s simply remarkable. And it’s all based on writing code to extend the benefits derived.

Blink and everything changes. I can only add to that: Blink twice and it has probably passed you by. I am writing this on June 28. It has been an eventful week. Several times in this last week everything changed in the blink of an eye.

The 21st Century Cures Act legislation passed the U.S. House of Representatives on July 10, 2015, with a vote of 344 to 77. The act’s intent is to remove barriers to innovation, allowing the rapid pace of scientific discovery we are experiencing to be more rapidly translated into cures for patients.

This column has two parts. The first is about the changing changes that are changing what we do, how we do it, and who we do it for/to. The second is about how people make decisions. You and me and everybody that we try to get to make the “right” decisions.

Continuing work toward achieving its strategic plan, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) released a draft interoperability report in January entitled “Connecting Health and Care for the Nation: A Shared Nationwide Interoperability Roadmap.”

Do you realize that it’s been nearly 10 years since the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) published the initial “foundation” standards for electronic prescribing (eRx)? But how do we compare to other countries?

With the first biosimilar approval in March and the FDA’s publishing of biosimilar industry guidance documents in April, it is essential to evaluate different stakeholder perspectives concerning what is already known about biosimilars and what still remains to be determined.

Recently, I came across a couple of books that are very interesting and well written. One is about the people who “invented” computers. The other is about the people who “created” Obamacare. Both examine how things get done and how people interact in the process.