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Imagine that.. you interview a former DEA staffer (Mr Stutman) whose business According to this, is in the business of selling fear of drug abuse Mr. Stuttman left the DEA in 1990 to found Employee Information Services, Inc., the nation’s largest management consulting firm specializing in the design and implementation of substance abuse prevention programs for all industries. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/interviews/stutman.html
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Some lawmakers are concerned that the science isn’t there yet to prove cannabis oil really works. Others have reservations about passing something that Congress still deems illegal.
I am concerned that some people that have brains.. there isn’t any real proof that there is any intelligence there 🙁
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As of Jan. 1, 2015, nurse practitioners (NPs) in New York who have more than 3,600 hours of clinical experience are no longer required to submit patient charts for review to “collaborative” physicians.
“NPs are no longer tethered to a physician who may or may not have anything to do with the patient,” Stephen Ferrara, DNP, executive director of the Nurse Practitioner Association (NPA) in Clifton Park, N.Y., told MedPage Today in a phone interview. “What we found — we have NP practice owners — is that the practice [under the old system] hinges on this third party. NPs didn’t have any control and they’re left hanging in the balance.”
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http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/01/19/police-radar-see-through-walls/22007615/
WASHINGTON — At least 50 U.S. law enforcement agencies have secretly equipped their officers with radar devices that allow them to effectively peer through the walls of houses to see whether anyone is inside, a practice raising new concerns about the extent of government surveillance.
Those agencies, including the FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service, began deploying the radar systems more than two years ago with little notice to the courts and no public disclosure of when or how they would be used. The technology raises legal and privacy issues because the U.S. Supreme Court has said officers generally cannot use high-tech sensors to tell them about the inside of a person’s house without first obtaining a search warrant.
Those concerns are especially thorny when it comes to technology that lets the police determine what’s happening inside someone’s home. The Supreme Court ruled in 2001 that the Constitution generally bars police from scanning the outside of a house with a thermal camera unless they have a warrant, and specifically noted that the rule would apply to radar-based systems that were then being developed.
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What’s to say that this year’s still unsettled Aetna/Coventry Part D snafu won’t be repeated in the 2016 plan year? What assurances should patients have that the Medicare Plan Finder, the government’s plan cost and pharmacy access comparison tool, contains accurate information? Should patients—and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services—just assume that plan sponsors or PBMs aren’t knowingly trying to rig the system, just the way NFL referees assumed that game balls weren’t being purposefully deflated?
Congress created Medicare Part D a decade ago, and now is a good time for it to ask some specific questions and examine if this public-private partnership is operating at maximum efficiency or if it could do even more for seniors. It’s at the micro level where the impact is felt from situations like the one involving Aetna. Many of you could provide examples of your own (and we hope that you will), but here are some that have come to our attention:
A pharmacist in rural Montana serves 25 patients impacted by this situation, some of whom have acute medication needs such as for the flu and mood disorders. The nearest “in-network” pharmacy is 85 miles away in North Dakota.
A Native American in Northern California usually receives his medications for chronic pain and depression from a local tribal clinic pharmacy for $5. That pharmacy is now out of network. He cannot afford the $918 out-of-pocket costs, potentially forcing him to the emergency room for treatment.
A 93-year-old, retired optometrist and veteran had to arrange a special trip to his community pharmacy to switch to a new Medicare drug plan that allowed him to stick with his pharmacy. Accompanied by his caregiver he sat beside the pharmacy counter in his wheelchair while breathing through his oxygen (supplied by the pharmacy) for over an hour on the phone with 1-800-MEDICARE.
These patient calamities are some of the reasons why earlier this week I asked the relevant congressional committees to schedule hearings to carefully investigate the alarming problems seniors have dealt with in the 2015 plan year—some 50,000 affected to some extent—and ensure that nothing like them happen again. The problems recall patient access issues experienced by other Medicare beneficiaries and help further illustrate the need for an effective “any willing pharmacy” policy.
However, Congress needs to hear directly from seniors. As such, NCPA has developed resources available to you to help you engage your patients and encourage their immediate action. These include a bag stuffer as well as a patient letter that can either be printed and mailed or emailed directly to their congressional offices to make their concerns known.
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http://www.law360.com/articles/614532/needle-phobic-pharmacist-wins-2-6m-verdict-against-rite-aid
Law360, New York (January 23, 2015, 7:35 PM ET) — A New York federal jury on Thursday awarded $2.6 million to a former Rite Aid pharmacist who said the company fired him because a needle phobia prevented him from giving flu vaccination shots.
The jury found that Rite Aid’s treatment of Christopher Stevens, who was fired in 2011 after he refused to attend immunization training because he had trypanophobia, ran afoul of the Americans with Disabilities Act and New York’s Human Rights Act. It awarded Stevens $485,000 in back pay, $1.2 million in front pay and $900,000…
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Many public and private insurers are taking steps to control rising health care costs. For example, some state Medicaid programs in recent years have enacted prescription drug restrictions by placing caps or limits on the number of prescriptions a patient can fill each month. The results of this systematic review of past studies suggests that restricting the availability of prescription drugs or prohibiting access could have collateral negative effects on patients’ health and may not produce the expected cost-savings. They also suggest that economic calculations of Medicaid expansion have not taken into consideration the reduction in costs from the prevention of complications when millions of Americans previously without drug insurance are able to access important medicines to better manage chronic conditions.
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http://in.reuters.com/article/2015/01/22/us-usa-washington-hospital-idINKBN0KV2P620150122
By Victoria Cavaliere
SEATTLE (Reuters) – A drug-resistant superbug infected 32 people at a Seattle hospital over a two-year period, with the bacteria spreading through contaminated medical scopes that had been cleaned to the manufacturer’s recommendation, officials said on Thursday.
Eleven of the patients infected at Virginia Mason Medical Center between 2012 and 2014 eventually died, the hospital and city health officials said. But those patients were critically ill before being infected and it was unclear what role, if any, the bacteria played in their deaths.
The patients were infected with drug-resistant bacteria, including the rare Carbapenem-resistant enterobacteriaceae, which are difficult to treat because they have high levels of resistance to antibiotics, said Dr. Jeffrey Duchin, a senior official at Public Health – Seattle & King County.
The report follows similar incidents in Pittsburgh in 2012 and Chicago in 2014, where contaminated endoscopes infected dozens of patients, health officials said. No fatalities were directly linked to the infections.
In the Seattle case, public health officials said the germs apparently spread from patient to patient by endoscopes used to treat liver and pancreatic illnesses. Duchin said the scopes are typically used for thousands of procedures each year in U.S. hospitals.
The scopes at Virginia Mason Medical Center were sterilized to existing standards before each use, public health officials and the hospital said.
“This is a national problem,” Virginia Mason Medical Center said in a statement. “We determined that the endoscope manufacturer’s, as well as the federal government’s, recommended guidelines for processing the scopes are inadequate.”
Duchin said it took investigators months to pinpoint the contamination, and the hospital has since instituted a rigorous decontamination process that exceeds national standards.
There are three major manufacturers of the scopes, called duodenoscopes: Olympus Corp, Fujifilm and Pentax.
Their disinfection recommendations were approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The FDA said in a statement it was actively engaged with manufacturers and other government agencies to develop solutions to minimize patient risk.
Olympus, which supplies many of the Seattle hospital’s scopes, said in a statement it was “monitoring this issue closely.”
It was unclear how many people were exposed to the superbug, officials said. The bacteria can cause serious infections such as pneumonia, bloodstream infections and meningitis.
Neither the hospital nor local health officials notified the public about the outbreak because “there was not a strong rationale for doing so,” Duchin said.
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It’s a disturbing trend–robbers targeting several local CVS pharmacies around Indianapolis. Police say cash isn’t the motive. Instead, thieves are going after powerful narcotics. Just this week, police released photos of a young boy about 10 or 11-years-old robbing a CVS store. He handed over a note requesting very specific drugs. In most cases IMPD believe the drugs land in the hands of street dealers. According to the Drug Enforcement Association, Indiana is number two in the country for pharmacy robberies. Thursday morning IMPD arrested a woman after she was accused of robbing a CVS on the southwest side. She was found with a robbery note and a variety of prescription drugs. Experts say another motivation behind this trend could be people fueling addictions and pharmacies are the perfect target.
INDIANA is the 16th most populated state in the country and the 38th largest state by area… Heroin use/abuse/deaths are going up exponentially and ranks at or near the top for meth labs busts and increasing.. and Indiana’s AG Greg Zoeller .. implemented his BITTER PILL website a couple of years ago.. and is being sued by the ACLU for requiring all people taking opiates for more than 90 consecutive days to have urine tests.. Something about violating the 4th Amendment of unreasonable search and seizure… If Zoeller is trying to obtain a higher public profile to run for higher office.. I wonder how all of this is working for him ?
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Pharmacy danger – Pharmacists speak out about a system they say endangers Canadian lives
http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/pharmacy-errors-how-often-do-they-happen-nobody-knows-1.2920158
If a pharmacist gives you the wrong drug or dose, it can be dangerous or even deadly. But how often does it happen in Canada? A CBC News/Marketplace investigation reveals that nobody knows.
Talk about your “garden variety EPIDEMIC”.. the common denominator ?… Professional associations that don’t want to get involved and chains wanting to increase profits at the expense of pt safety…
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