Pharmacy Voices

Reporters from a major metropolitan newspaper took prescriptions for drugs that had serious interaction potentials to a significant number of pharmacies. In the vast majority of the pharmacies, there was no indication that anything was done to deal with the interaction issue.

Many recent conferences, including ASAP’s annual conference, have addressed the topic of pharmacy accreditation. In this column, we’ll do a deeper dive into what accreditation is and why it’s getting so much attention by pharmacies.

It’s been 17 years and 95 articles. 17 years ago the term “health information technology” was not in vogue. The intent of our column has always been to inform readers about emerging technologies that can support their practice immediately, while not venturing into bleeding-edge technologies that are not ready for widespread implementation or are too risky for you to devote scarce resources to.

The drug product identifier used by pharmacies to submit prescription claims — the NDC (National Drug Code) number for the majority of those products — is going to run out of numbers sometime in the next decade.

More from the May/June 2017 Cover Story, Raising the Bar in Long-Term Care Pharmacy... Tabula Rasa Healthcare CEO Cal Knowlton offers a couple of thoughts for us to ponder regarding pharmacy in general and LTC pharmacy in particular, including the medication safety metrics by which pharmacy will be measured.

A lot of attention is being given to the topic of medication adherence. Without doubt people not following the prescribed regimen of their prescriptions is one of the drivers for the high cost of healthcare.

Over the past few months, the price of drugs has gotten a lot of attention. It was an issue on Capitol Hill, on the campaign trail, and in newspapers, magazines, and television. We’re all familiar with the names Shkreli and Bresch. With all this discussion, there are still no easy answers.

A quick Google search for “popular tech gifts of 2016” returns a very large number of lists from a variety of authoritative sources. While we sometimes recommend tech newbies stay away from the bleeding edge items, there are a number of popular tech gifts that are ready for prime time usage by even the latest tech adopters.

With the tumultuous election behind us, our thoughts turn to a new year and the challenges that lie ahead. These changes should be beneficial for the economy while also creating new opportunities and challenges for the pharmacy industry.

In the ‘60s I had a boss who was more of a mentor than a boss. He was a physician in charge of a group of four or five health professionals who were creating all of the rules for California’s Medicaid program. We had a lot of fascinating and difficult things to work on.