As we close the doors on Lung Cancer Awareness Month, do you wonder why it went by completely unpublicized? Why the NFL players didn’t sport incongruous ribbons and accessories in the color designated for the illness? IS there a color designated for lung cancer, a disease that kills more than 156,000 people per year? That’s more than 443 every day…and yet it remains a dirty little secret in a world of highly publicized causes. [click to continue…]
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Pharmacists across the U.S. came together to form a coalition to advocate transparency in drug pricing. So far, 600 pharmacists in 40 states have joined Pharmacists United for Truth and Transparency to expose the tactics that pharmacy benefits managers (PBMs) use to drive up drug prices. [click to continue…]
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OptumRx and the American Pharmacists Association (APhA) have teamed up to launch a new educational initiative for students in grades 8-12 to spark interest in the pharmacy field. [click to continue…]
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Six central Alabama hospitals dispensed dangerous medications to patients following a careless pharmaceutical mistake. Nineteen patients received amino acid solution prepared by Meds IV, a compounding pharmacy in Birmingham. Nine of those patients died. [click to continue…]
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With the huge numbers of baby boomers rapidly aging and becoming more dependent on medications, drug shortages are reaching national crisis stage. Medicines in short supply include cancer treatments, pain medications, and anesthesia drugs, along with other lifesaving and critical drugs. The need has increased dramatically in the last five years, but production has not increased, and it could be years before supply catches up with demand, leaving patients in the lurch. In addition, many chemotherapy drug patents have expired over the last few years, and the generic industry has been slow to ramp up. [click to continue…]
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A recent study by the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and the University of Cincinnati, published online in the Journal of Pediatrics, cites an alarming increase in the number of children under five years of age poisoned at home by accidentally ingesting medications. Approximately 95% of those poisonings were the result of children taking medicines on their own. As a result, pediatric poisoning cases resulting in visits to emergency rooms have dramatically increased. Dr. Randall Bond, co-author of the study, said that “the problem of pediatric poisoning in the U.S. is getting worse, not better.” [click to continue…]
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