Pharmacy Voices

“DRUGS DON’T WORK IN patients who don’t take them,” as former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, M.D., famously said. Medication adherence — the extent to which a patient takes medication as prescribed — is requisite for their therapeutic effects...

MERGER MANIA HAS accelerated in the healthcare market, and pharmacy is a key factor driving these new alignments. Recent mergers that have caught our eye include: CVS/Aetna CIGNA/Express Scripts Albertsons/Rite Aid ...

ComputerTalk’s featured vendor this week is DataScan Pharmacy, Inc., a family-owned pharmacy management company that was one of the first computer vendors providing software to pharmacy since 1981. Datascan specializes in pharmacy management software, as well as our point-of-sale,...

I HAVE A PET PEEVE. I expect it is one of your peeves as well. Maybe together we can figure out what to do about it. It concerns the public media. We all see it every day. It is mildly...

WHAT IS DISTURBING TO ME is how an individual’s privacy is being compromised of late. It seems like a day doesn’t pass without reading about ransomware dealing with a person’s medical information. Hackers have fine-tuned the art of invading the...

Unlike traditional drug interaction alerts that pop up the pharmacy system, pharmacogenetics takes into account how an individual metabolism processes a drug. With more accessible test kits, it’s possible to record the unique molecular structure of each person, and...

Amazon has rocked the foundation of brick-and-mortar retailers, forcing store closures and causing profits to plummet. Next up may be pharmacy. That’s the buzz, but pharmacy is not groceries. It’s not diapers. It’s not books. It is highly regulated, and run-of-the-mill prescriptions these days are not moneymakers. Specialty drugs are, but this is a different breed of pharmacy, one that I do not see fitting into the Amazon business model. Nevertheless, it could be a problem for community pharmacy, both chain and independent, if Amazon enters the pharmacy market.

Today, as the new year begins, I found it interesting to scan some of the top healthcare- and pharmacy-related stories for 2017. Modern Healthcare and Forbes focused heavily on the year’s attempts to “reform” the Affordable Care Act (ACA),...

Practice settings across healthcare are finding value in expanding the pharmacy’s role, and health systems are no exception. In this interview with Carolinas HealthCare System Director of Outpatient Pharmacy Services Frank McCree, we hear an accelerating shift toward allocating...

Integra LTC Solutions and QS/1 President Kevin Welch talks with ComputerTalk’s Maggie Lockwood about his new role as CTO of J M Smith Corporation and the new Long Term Care Center of Excellence. Kevin Welch, in addition to his...